One of the things nobody had been able to get Val to do any more was to sing. This had been at first set down to the death of her father, and a special association of him with music. Even Julia shared that view.
The next spring after the summer the Otways had spent at Long Branch, the three girls—Julia, Emmie, and Val—sat one chill afternoon on the hearth-rug before the fire in the blue room. With very buttery fingers they were eating the last of a great bowl of popcorn. Val, who had presided over the popping, was losing the becoming flush that occupation lent her. The years had taken from the face something of its old look of frankness and love of fun, that had been almost boyish in its simplicity. The subtler woman-look, the faint suggestion of brooding in the eyes, had matured the face and lent it meaning. Emmie was the same pretty creature, a little more fragile than before, whereas Julia was blooming and bourgeoning into a very handsome woman of somewhat majestic proportions. Instead of two, she looked five or six years older than Val's twenty-three years. The brown and choral chiné silk Julia wore this afternoon was turned away at the neck, and a lace fichu carefully drawn down over the fine bust left visible the prettiest throat in the world, as well as a little V-shaped space of fair white neck.
Emmie was tired of the talk of a party to which she was not going. It was on the night of the choir practice, and, besides, she didn't approve of dancing. She wiped her buttery fingers on her handkerchief.
"Let's go down-stairs and try our new hymn," she said, getting up.
"All right," agreed Julia.
"You two can, if you like," said Val.
"You must sing us 'Den lieben langen Tag;' I haven't heard it for years."
"Don't care about it any more." Val gathered up and crunched the hard scorched grains that had remained in the bottom of the bowl.
"Why not?"
"It's absurd to try to sing just after eating pop-corn."
"Nonsense!" said Emmie. "Grandma's reading old letters in the pack-room, so she won't hear. If you'll put away the corn popper, I'll get the key of the piano."
"It's a great pity not to keep up your music," said Julia, as Emmie went off with the empty bowl. "You'll get hopelessly rusty."
"I shall never sing a note as long as I live," said Val, "and I wish you wouldn't bother me about it before people."
Julia stared at her.
"You ought to understand without my telling you. It kills me to do it half and half. I'll forget I ever wanted to have music in my life."
"You mean, I must never ask you to sing again?"
"It's the one thing about the whole matter that hurts most. You see," Val said, with an effort to speak in a commonplace tone, "I'm not sulking about it, I'm not angry; I've simply wiped off the score."
"Dear Val, I'm so sorry!" Julia got up and put her arms about her friend. "I didn't realize— Oh, dearie, how hard it's been for you all this time, when you take it like that!"
"Like what?"
"So—so quietly, so splendidly," said Julia, vaguely.
"Oh, you needn't think I'm trying to be a heroine," said Val, a little defiantly; "it's just that I prefer not being a bungler when I know that if I'd had half a chance—" She choked suddenly, and flung herself down before the fire with her face hidden. Julia kneeled beside her, murmuring sympathy.
"I think such a lot about my aunt Valeria these days," said Val, sitting up presently and wiping her eyes. "This was her room, you know."
Julia nodded, looking round upon the walls.
"She painted these things, didn't she?"
"Yes," said Val. "Ain't they awful? It would half kill my grandmother to hear anybody say that, and yet it's her fault that they're awful. You know she wouldn't let Aunt Valeria go away and study when she was young. Sh!"
Mrs. Gano's voice was heard outside the door calling Emmie to hunt for a certain portfolio. She came in, looking through her spectacles at some papers in her hand. She was heavily shawled and wore gloves (as she did constantly now), and she had an old white Indian scarf over her head. The broché ends hung down to her knees. She looked up sharply from the yellowed papers as she came in. The two girls jumped to their feet. Mrs. Gano greeted Julia cordially.
"Do you want us to go?" asked Val. "I brought Julia in here because there was a fire."
"Certainly don't go," said Mrs. Gano. "I only came in for Valeria's little desk."
Val helped to take off the carefully made cover that fitted over it. Between the cover and the desk was something lying flat, carefully done up in tissue-paper. Mrs. Gano opened it and smiled, recognizing the scrawl on the square of card-board.
"Ah! Valeria's first attempt at a portrait of her father! She was a mere baby." The old eyes beamed through the gold-bound spectacles, tender with memory. "Her brother Ethan laughed at her, and said it was more like the pear-tree than like their father—you see what he meant." She laughed gently. "But Mr. Gano comforted Valeria, and said, 'It's quite like enough, my dear. I've no desire to have my daughter a limner.'"
"Do you know, I can never get over the idea that 'limner' is something immoral—indecent," said Val.
Mrs. Gano smiled reflectively. "Neither could your grandfather. That was the dash of Puritan in him."
"Oh, but I mean the mere word. You told us that story when we were children, and I didn't dare to ask; but I was sure it meant something horrid, like some of the words in the Bible that look quite innocent and yet mustn't be used in general conversation."
"Not at all," said Mrs. Gano, with a dignified air. "Your grandfather was merely agreeing with Dr. Johnson that portrait-painting was an improper employment for a woman. 'Public practice of any art and staring in men's faces is very indelicate in a female,'" she quoted, but she smiled again. "If your grandfather had lived, none of you would ever have had a drawing lesson. I am more liberal about these things."
Val flashed a covert look at Julia. John Gano and others had filled in the dim outlines of Valeria's life, and the things she had left behind were eloquent in a way their creator never dreamed, and would bitterly have resented. Mrs. Gano was lifting up the desk.
"Let me carry it in for you," said Val, preceding her grandmother with the little rosewood box.
As she came back Julia heard Val in the hall dismissing poor Emmie and her piano key with short shrift. She closed the door sharply, and confronted her friend with ominous eyes.
"How my grandmother can bear to be so much in that room!"
"Without a fire on a day like this?"
"Yes; but anyhow, it's horrible in there."
"I thought you used to love it when she let you in."
"Yes, when I was little, and didn't understand. It's full of dilapidated things that belonged to dead people. Ethan's father's fiddle—smashed. My father's patent lamps—none of 'em work. Our grandfather's walking-sticks, very tired-looking, leaning dejected against the wall under a faded dirty picture of the Baptist college he built—it's a Roman Catholic hospital now. And then that thing ofAunt Valeria's—that's the worst of all!" She came nearer, and crouched down on the rug beside her friend.
"What do you mean?"
"A pile of what used to be modelling clay. It's quite black now, but if you see it in one particular way a face seems to look dimly at you out of the dust, and, oh! it's the sorrowfullest face I ever saw. It's the face of somebody who hadn't a chance."
"What is it like?"
"My opinion is it's Aunt Valeria's face, but sometimes—sometimes it looks like me."
Neither spoke for awhile. Val sat huddled together staring into the blaze.
"Sheused to lie on the rug here before the fire, too."
The girl threw back her head like one shaking off an evil dream, but her eye was suddenly arrested.
"I wonder what she thought of Mazeppa."
"Mazeppa?" echoed Julia.
"Yes." The other nodded to the iron bas-relief above the grate. "The first time I heard father talk about natural law, about lines of least resistance and all kinds of horrors (ante-natal tendencies and the rest), I used to think of Mazeppa, and feel I was being bound on the wild horse of the Past and left to the wolves. But I always knew I should escape. It troubles me when I remember that Aunt Valeria didn't. And perhaps she sat here with the same faith I have." She gave a little shiver and stood up. "No, no; of course we've been utterly different from the beginning."
"You've changed in the last two years more than anybody I ever knew."
Val turned quickly upon her friend.
"You mean, I'm getting to be like Aunt Valeria?"
"I don't know; I never saw her. But you—you are getting awfully civilized."
She laughed. Val was very grave.
"Do you remember," Julia went on, "your plan of running away to be a chorus-girl?"
"Yes"—the answer rang sharply—"and I would have done it too but that grandma needed me—" She stopped, with a face suddenly fear-stricken. "It looks as if Iwasgrowing like Aunt Valeria"—she walked up and down the room with her head caught between her two hands—"but I'm not—I'm not."
She stopped before Julia, a prey to the feeling that if she allowed Julia to think so shewouldbe like Aunt Valeria. She had the sense of one lying in a trance: that if he does not make a superhuman effort now and protest effectively he will be buried alive. The girl glanced excitedly round the room, and felt the old presence egging her on. It was here that other Valeria had dreamed and tried to work; it was here she faced defeat—here she died, looking out at dawn to the rampart hills that had hemmed them both in beyond escape.
"Don't think I'm the very least like her. I don't want to be a sculptor or a poet, and that's not like Aunt Valeria. I'm not staying here out of respect for any silly old family traditions, nor even because my grandmother needs me. I've been pretending. I'm really staying for Ethan's sake"—her face grew crimson—"that'snot like Aunt Valeria."
"For Ethan's sake!" echoed her friend.
"Yes. He made me promise. It's only for a little while I am giving up my music not because I'm growing civilized, as you imagine, but because I shall get something I want more, and that's not like Aunt Valeria. And it doesn't matter who says 'No' to what I want:I'll have it—yes, I'll have it in spite of all the angels in heaven and all the demons in hell, andthat'snot like Aunt Valeria!"
Julia, still sitting on the hearth-rug, had leaned forward, and was staring at Val with a curious expression. The crouched-together attitude had caused an envelope the girl had hidden in her bodice to work up to the bit of bare neck revealed by the low-folded fichu. Val fastened sharp eyes upon that part of the familiar gray-blue paper wherein Ethan's unmistakable hand she read as much of Julia's last name as "tway." Val's fixed stare made the other look down. Two guilty hands flew to her breast.
"Will you let me see that letter?" said Val.
"No."
"You must. I've told you my secret."
"I didn't ask you to."
Julia got up.
"There's something in it you're ashamed to show," said Val.
"Not at all."
"How long have you been corresponding with Ethan?"
"You've no right to cross-question me. I'm going home."
She moved to the door, and turned as she put her hand on the knob to say good-bye. The word died on her lips as she saw Val's face. Before Julia quite realized what was happening, the other had leaped upon her like a young panther, and was tearing away the fichu at her neck. A short struggle, and the letter was dragged out of its hiding-place. Val tore open the door and fled down-stairs, out across the back and round the wooden L, in at the side-porch, through the kitchen, crying to Jerusha, "Don't tell Julia where I am!" up the back-stairs, and into an unused room opening onto the long hall. She locked herself in, and sat down in the dim light. Every pulse in her body was thumping like a stamp-mill. She slipped onto her knees before the shrouded window, and with quivering hands took out of the crumpled envelope several sheets of thin blue Irish linen-paper closely written.
"Oh, longer than any of mine!" she wailed, in her sore heart.
But, stop! it wasn't all one letter. A little note was to apologize to "Dear Miss Julia" for not answering her two former "charming letters," and to decline with many thanks the Otways' kind invitation to come and visit them.
"The audacity! To visitthemindeed!"
His excuse was the pressure of political engagements.
"She had to writetwocharming letters to get this."
But the postmark was the capital of the State. He was less than two hours away! The other—the long communication—lacked the first page, according to the numbering. She turned to the broken sentence at the beginning:
"... realized I was rather too notoriously a 'rich man' to stand much chance of election, but I was at least a man who couldaffordto be defeated, and yet go on doing his level best to serve his country. I started in, believing that the way to serve her best was by being a Republican and a Sound Money man. It was all very well to say my own private interests lay along that line; I believed the public interest did as well. But I was not satisfied to be 'run' in blinders by an agent or a committee, pledged to see nothing but party advantages, pledged to controvert opposing opinions, however sound or unforeseen. I couldn't help seeing the other side. That's my special curse, by the way, and will stand forever between me and effective action. I have been about among the working-classes and the idle poor. I took nobody's word. I investigated for myself the trades-unions, the various political and industrial organizations. I looked into Pullman patriarchal tyranny and into Carnegie despotism, and recalled the more humane, moredemocratic, attitude of masters to men in the effete monarchies abroad. Here, in free America, tyranny stalks naked and unashamed. The employment of politics for mere private gain, the abuse of patronage, and in business the war of extermination waged by trusts and combines—everywhere the right of moneyed might, the rich playing into the hands of the rich while pretending to serve the people—all this opened my eyes. I have just come from Ironville. The strike is not going to be settled so easily, although the suffering is appalling. The masters mean to starve the men to death; the men mean to blow the masters to atoms. This is theunionI find in my native land—this the new free brotherhood of men. Sharks devouring little fishes!"What with lawless greed on one side and lawless need on the other, the outlook frowns. The question of the future isn't silver versus gold, it isn't Republican against Democrat, nor North against South, nor East against West, but human dignity and decency against capitalist slave-drivers and despoilers of the poor.Youknow the spirit of fervor and of patriotism that carried me into the campaign. I tell you I'm sick with disillusionment."I am far more afraid of being elected than of facing defeat. I have learned that these measures I proposed in such good faith are half-measures foredoomed to failure. Give me, if you can, some good reason to believe that this great and prosperous America is not like to become the devil's drill-ground.Yours very sincerely,"Ethan Gano."
"... realized I was rather too notoriously a 'rich man' to stand much chance of election, but I was at least a man who couldaffordto be defeated, and yet go on doing his level best to serve his country. I started in, believing that the way to serve her best was by being a Republican and a Sound Money man. It was all very well to say my own private interests lay along that line; I believed the public interest did as well. But I was not satisfied to be 'run' in blinders by an agent or a committee, pledged to see nothing but party advantages, pledged to controvert opposing opinions, however sound or unforeseen. I couldn't help seeing the other side. That's my special curse, by the way, and will stand forever between me and effective action. I have been about among the working-classes and the idle poor. I took nobody's word. I investigated for myself the trades-unions, the various political and industrial organizations. I looked into Pullman patriarchal tyranny and into Carnegie despotism, and recalled the more humane, moredemocratic, attitude of masters to men in the effete monarchies abroad. Here, in free America, tyranny stalks naked and unashamed. The employment of politics for mere private gain, the abuse of patronage, and in business the war of extermination waged by trusts and combines—everywhere the right of moneyed might, the rich playing into the hands of the rich while pretending to serve the people—all this opened my eyes. I have just come from Ironville. The strike is not going to be settled so easily, although the suffering is appalling. The masters mean to starve the men to death; the men mean to blow the masters to atoms. This is theunionI find in my native land—this the new free brotherhood of men. Sharks devouring little fishes!
"What with lawless greed on one side and lawless need on the other, the outlook frowns. The question of the future isn't silver versus gold, it isn't Republican against Democrat, nor North against South, nor East against West, but human dignity and decency against capitalist slave-drivers and despoilers of the poor.Youknow the spirit of fervor and of patriotism that carried me into the campaign. I tell you I'm sick with disillusionment.
"I am far more afraid of being elected than of facing defeat. I have learned that these measures I proposed in such good faith are half-measures foredoomed to failure. Give me, if you can, some good reason to believe that this great and prosperous America is not like to become the devil's drill-ground.Yours very sincerely,
"Ethan Gano."
"Well, of all the funny letters for a man to write a girl!"
Juliagive him a reason! Julia setting herself up as understanding politics! To be sure, she was two years older than Val, and was always seeing her father's political friends; but that didn't account for.... It came over her how little one woman knows the side another woman turns to men. It must be immensely flattering to have a "politician" writing to her on terms of equality. Oh yes, Julia must be enormously uplifted. Val was sure of it by the heaviness that weighedherdown. Julia, no doubt, had "studied up" in order to share Ethan's interests on a side that Val and other girls couldn't reach.
As she came out of her hiding-place she was concocting in her mind a letter which the servant should carry over to Julia with the confiscated correspondence.
Her excitement had died down, leaving for the moment a dead weight of wretchedness. Ethan's letters to her had seemed before so full and satisfactory, even her hungry curiosity had felt no want in them that a letter could supply. For even the love he did not put into words seemed not only implicit in every line of each "enclosure," but more subtly delicious being veiled. His letters had filled up the empty spaces in her life, seeming to carry her along step by step through his. But if there was all this besides which he cared to write to Julia, what more might there not be in a life so full and varied as his? How had she been so blind, so easily content? It was years since they had said good-bye. Wasn't nearly every novel in the world a warning against believing that men remembered long the girl who was out of sight? No doubt, what she had dimly feared had happened at Long Branch last summer—Julia had improved the shining hour.
Val went wearily down the long hall, feeling that all the zest had gone out of existence forever. She stopped to lean against the last window at the head of the back-stairs. Looking out, she saw to her surprise that Julia was sitting on the terrace under the crooked catalpa-tree. Ah, shecouldn't go and leave that precious letter behind! Val went down to her with angry-beating heart. The other girl, leaning back against the tree, watched with sullen eyes the slow approach. She had wrapped the torn fichu up close about her throat. Something in Julia's handsome impassivity stirred the other to a rage, more becoming had she not been the arch offender. She dropped the crumpled envelope into Julia's lap.
"I congratulate you on being able to hold up your end of such a weighty correspondence."
"Is that all you have to say after leaping at me like a wild-cat and taking what didn't belong to you?"
"Oh, you're waiting here for me to apologize?"
Julia got up slowly.
"I never thoughtyouwould do such a dishonorable thing!"
"It wasn't dishonorable. You and I were 'bestfriends.' I had just given you my whole confidence. You owed it to me to be as frank with me. I took what belonged to me."
"And I say that if you broke into our house and stole the silver, you couldn't be more of a thief than you are this moment."
Val stared at her speechless, and then:
"I think if you were a man I could kill you. Why do you stay here?" she said, coming a step nearer with ill-controlled fury. "We aren't expecting Ethan to-day. Why do you stay?"
Julia squared her Junoesque shoulders against the crooked tree and stood her ground.
"You can, of course, behave like a wild savage if it suits you, but I'd like to know what you mean to do."
"Do!" Val dropped her arms listless to her sides. "What is there to do?"
"Shall you tell your cousin you stole his letters?"
"No. I shall tell my cousin exactly what happened." She turned to go up to the house.
"I wouldn't, if I were you. Look here, there's no reason,because our friendship's broken, that we should do more things we shall regret. You've no right because you've got hold of my secret—you've no right to pass it on to Ethan." It was an agony to hear her call him Ethan. "You mustn't tell him that I—that I carry his letters about. And I won't tell him that you—"
"Tell him what you like!"
Val went angrily up the terrace-steps; but all the same, Julia knew perfectly that she had secured herself now against Ethan's hearing what had happened. Val could, most indefensibly, tear her secret out of her keeping in the passion of the moment. But Julia had little fear that in cold blood her old friend would "give her away" to the man they both loved.
That night Mrs. Gano was prostrated by a feverish cold. The doctor was sent for, and Val carried out his instructions so faithfully that in twenty-four hours the patient was comfortably mending.
In the intervals of nursing Val had written to Ethan in pencil:
"I've got to see you. It doesn't matter that I can't ask you to the Fort, or that grandma is not to know. You must come and stay a day or two at some small town quite near here. I'll get a day off for a picnic or something, and meet you either in Blake's Woods, or at one of the steamboat landings up the river. Don't hesitate about this. I'm not a child, and I've a right to see you about a matter so important to me."
"I've got to see you. It doesn't matter that I can't ask you to the Fort, or that grandma is not to know. You must come and stay a day or two at some small town quite near here. I'll get a day off for a picnic or something, and meet you either in Blake's Woods, or at one of the steamboat landings up the river. Don't hesitate about this. I'm not a child, and I've a right to see you about a matter so important to me."
She closed without a hint as to what the matter was.
He answered by return of post, pointing out that he couldn't possibly come to see her clandestinely, for her own sake.
"For my sake! Not a bit of it. For grandma's sake. He's afraid."
The conclusion was the easier in that she was herself afraid. It was then Val remembered that Mrs. Ball, the former Jessie Hornsey, who now lived in the capital of the State, had several times asked Val to visit her. The girl went out and sent the lady a telegram. "I'm going to stay a few days with Mrs. Austin Ball," she announced with outward calm and much inward trepidation when she came home.
"You are going—" Mrs. Gano sat up in bed and stared.
"Oh, Val," remonstrated Emmie, "and grandma ill in bed!"
"That has nothing to do with it," said the invalid, shortly. "But my house is not a Family Hotel for people to come and go as they—" A sneeze spoiled the effect she was making.
"There, you've caught more cold!"
Emmie rushed across the room and brought a shawl. Val wanted to help put it round her. Mrs. Gano waved her off, took the shawl herself, and with some premonition, perhaps, of a coming crisis, said:
"What does this mean?"
"It means that at last I want to accept one of Mrs. Ball's dozen invitations. The doctor says you're better. You could telegraph me if—"
"That's all very well, but in this house it is customary—"
"Yes, yes, dearest; I know it's customary to ask leave, and I do ask it. But you must let me go. I—I never go anywhere, I never do anything; all my life is slipping away, just as Aunt Valeria's did."
The old woman looked into the young face and read the signs there misguidedly enough to say:
"Well, well, we can't very well afford it, but perhaps a little change—"
"I'll make it up, you'll see."
No later than that same afternoon the girl was on her way. She had given Ethan no warning—did not even know if she would find him still at the hotel from which he had written to Julia; but she drove straight to the Wharton House, learned that he was in, and sent up word that a lady wanted to see him.
While she sat there, oblivious of the expensive ugliness of the empty hotel parlor, the thought of seeing Ethan after all these years did not shut out the haunting remembrance of her grandmother. If that scorner of deceptions could see her now! If she ever came to know that Val, whom she trusted, had acted this complicated lie in order, most unmaiden-like, to beg a stolen interview with a man! She cringed at the thought of the old woman's high unsparing scorn. "Why do I always think of her! Other girlsdon't take even their fathers and mothers so seriously. They aren'thauntedby them." She hunched her shoulders with discomfiture. Why didn't Ethan come? What would her grandmother say? It would be distinctly awful to be despised by her. Should she save her reputation by running away without seeing Ethan? It seemed a sudden blessed way of escape from domestic degradation. She half rose, staring absently at the sofa pattern. Suddenly the perplexed eyes widened; the vague design of the satin damask had wrought itself into her brain. Out of the scrolls and arabesques a face seemed staring at her. With a twist of pain she recognized it—that sorrowfullest of all faces—that face of some one who never had a chance. The poor dim ghost that had been shut up so long in Aunt Valeria's dusty heap of clay, that had appeared to Val like a shadowy face at a prison grating—it had escaped at last: it was here!
As she sank back in the corner, the old tide of revolt rose high within her; but the flood to-day was chill with fear of failure, and bitter with the memory of those others who had been overwhelmed. Val had herself given up all "chances" for this one that she was reaching out for to-day. She was here to put that one to proof, and— Ethan was at the door! In that first instant of his non-recognition her heart turned sick, so cold he looked, and so remote, forbidding even. She got up and came forward.
Ethan cried out in astonishment, throwing down his hat:
"You!No, not really!"
"Yes."
He took both her hands, and looked into her face. Had she really thought him cold? Turning, he glanced about the room, as if to assure himself they were alone. She disengaged her hands.
"Come out and walk; I don't like it here," she said.
He looked at her reflectively, and yet with a kind of smouldering excitement.
"We'll get a victoria, and drive out to the country."He led the way down-stairs. "But how on earth have you managed it?" he said.
"I didn't manage, I just came."
"Grandmamma is with you?"
"Oh no."
"Who, then?"
"Nobody."
"She hasn't let you come alone?"
He stopped.
"Oh, it's all right," she said, a little impatiently. "I've come to visit an old school-friend."
They chose one of the carriages in front of the hotel, and drove rapidly out of town.
She shrank back into her corner, feeling his eyes too keen upon her; but when by chance she encountered them, she would have been less than woman if she had not been reassured by the admiration in their kindling depths.
"I suppose I'm changed too," he said, smiling.
"Y-yes; you're a little more alarming than you used to be."
"Oh, really!" he laughed.
"I suppose the change in me is a different one?"
He nodded.
"You've kept your word."
"My word?"
"Don't you remember telling me that I was rather good-looking at that time, but the difference between us was that you'd improve and that I'd grow repellent and plain if I wasn't very careful?"
"Ineversaid such a—"
"Oh yes. You used to be a wise child. Are you a wise woman?"
"Not enough to hurt," she said, with a little grimace.
He asked about Mrs. Gano and Emmie, and the bedridden An' Jerusha. The year before, Venus had married the mulatto postman, and Val, at Ethan's suggestion, had bought them a cottage, where they all lived very happily. Val told him of the advent of the twins.
"What are you doing here?" she inquired, presently.
"Political business."
"I suppose you think I wouldn't understand that."
"I think it would probably bore you."
"Why bore me more than any other girls?"
"I didn't say so. But most young ladies of your age—"
"I'll soon be twenty-three; Julia is only twenty-four."
She could have bit her tongue out for her maladroitness.
"Julia? Ah, how is Julia?"
"This is pretty; let us stop here."
"All right. Driver, just pull up in that shade and wait for us."
They walked across the field, to a clump of trees by the Virginia rail-fence that separated them from the large market-garden on the other side.
"Now that I've come all this way," Val said, leaning against one of the elms, with her hands loosely clasped in front of her, "I want to run home and leave things to chance."
He made no answer. She glanced up to find him looking at her with an intentness that confused her. She turned away, sat down, and took off her hat. Her hair was loose; she pinned it up as well as she could, but her hands felt unskilful, helpless. She could not free herself from the sense of those deep eyes arraigning, caressing, compelling her. She looked up with a fluttering smile.
"Sit down, and don't stare."
He only leaned back against the opposite elm.
"Yes, there's some other change in you besides the growing prettier. What's happened?"
In the hypersensitized state of her nerves the question hurt keenly. That they should not have met for all this time, and he ask that! It was all she could do to keep the tears out of her lowered eyes.
"Come," he urged, "is some of the gilt worn off your particular piece of gingerbread?"
"No," she said, with recovered firmness; "I've not come to complain. I've only come to be helped to understand."
"Ah, life has pricked you, I see that—and"—he smiled faintly—"you don't understand."
"Yes," she said—the voice was not quite so steady—"I've got hurt. If I'd sat quiet, I wouldn't have bumped myself against sharp corners. But I shall not sit quiet."
"Oh no, you may be depended on for that."
"But Ihavesat quiet, you know, for years. That's done with, now."
He shifted his position uneasily.
"I don't want any longer to be always fortunate, always happy. I want to know about life. I want to understand."
Still he said nothing.
"It's a kind of death not to understand," she said.
"And has some of Death's peace to recommend it. But let's come to Hecuba. What do you want to understand?"
"It—is so—hard for me to say."
"Harder than not understanding?"
"No. I—want to know—if you have any objection to releasing me from my promise?"
"What promise?"
She put her hands up, quickly, to hide her convulsed face. He had forgotten!
"If you don't remember, that's release enough," she said, getting up.
He came forward and put his hand on her arm.
"You don't mean that about your going away from home?"
She nodded her averted head.
"Certainly I won't release you from that promise."
"Why not?" She turned swiftly on him. "What is it to you?"
"It's a great deal to me."
"Well, it's more to me. I've come to say I take my promise back."
He bent down to her.
"Youdidn'tcome to say that, Val."
Her wet eyes fell before his softened looks.
"I—I can't say just what I came to say."
"Why not?"
"You're gone so far from me."
"No, I haven't, dear." The dark face was close to hers. "I've tried, perhaps, but I haven't succeeded. Val—"
He drew her suddenly into his arms. She resisted a moment, and then, with a little cry of self-abandonment, she hid her face on his breast. They stood so till, with an infinitely tender movement, he turned the lithe body over into the hollow of his arm, and kissed the upturned face. She broke away trembling.
"Now I can ask you what I came to ask. Have you been caring about some one else more than you've been caring about me?"
"What in the world put that into your head?"
"You have—you have!" she said, getting white.
"But I have not."
"You like writing to others more than you do to me."
"I don't, indeed. It bores me horribly to write to other people."
"Why do you do it, then?"
"Oh, you're thinking of the letters I write Otway."
"Who?"
"Hezekiah Otway. You see, he's chairman of our—"
She darted forward and seized his hands, laughing and holding them to her breast as she looked up, radiant, into his face.
"Now we'll drive into town, if you please."
They went back to the carriage, and Val talked gayly about the Fort and the people Ethan had known when he was in New Plymouth.
"Where shall we meet to-morrow?" she said, when they were again in the town.
"Where does your Mrs. Ball live?"
"In the Chestnutville suburb. But that's no good."
"No good?"
"No; I've told you she's Miss Jessie Hornsey."
"Is that fatal?"
"Well, she'll want to do all the talking. You can come there of course, but it won't be seeing you."
He considered.
"How long shall you stay?"
"Mustn't be more than three or four days."
He crossed swords with his conscience and still considered.
"You must come in the morning and take me boating," she said.
He laughed.
"Oh, adorable directness! How it simplifies all things! Boating be it."
"We must go quickly to the station for my things; the train I'm due by is just in."
After getting her trunks and travelling-bag, they said good-bye, and Val drove alone to West Walnut Street.
Mrs. Ball received the girl warmly, and with apologies at having only just come in and found her message.
"I'm simply delighted to have got you at last. I only hope you won't find it dull. If you'd given me a little longer notice, I would have had some parties planned, and got Harry Wilbur to come. How is my handsome cousin?"
"Oh, he's all right; and dear Mrs. Ball"—the girl sat down on a stool and crossed her arms on her hostess's knee—"the fact is, I've come on some private business. I haven't time for parties. If you want to be an angel to me, just let me go and come as I please, for the two or three days I'm here."
"Days? Make it two or three weeks, my dear. You know you've always been an immense favorite of mine; my husband likes you, too. He said when we visited my mother's last year that you were the most charming girl in New Plymouth. Now it's settled, and I think I heard Austin come in." She kissed Val on both cheeks, and went down-stairs to confide to Mr. Ball that "the most charming girl" was not in New Plymouth, but under his roof, and was evidently up to some mischief, and what ought they to do?
"Play dominos!" Mr. Ball's childish old father suggested vacantly.
That favorite pastime meant to him shuffling the dominos aimlessly about the table, and in his more lucid intervals rising to the height of matching them.
"Yes, paw." The good Mrs. Ball emptied the dominos out of the box and set the old man to turning them face downwards. He went to sleep before the task was done.
"Oh!" ejaculated Mrs. Ball, suddenly catching sight of something in the evening paper her husband was unfolding.
"What?" She pointed to a paragraph announcing the meeting of the Sound Money men at the Central Hall. Chairman, Mr. Hezekiah Otway. Debate to be opened by Mr. Ethan Gano, etc.
"That's why she's come."
"Oh, think so?"
"Sure of it." The round good-natured face grew grave. "Husband, I think I ought to put Harry Wilbur on his guard."
"Don't you meddle with outsiders' affairs," said husband.
"My dear, Val Gano's as good as engaged to my cousin. Harry was very confidential with me the last time he was here. This Ethan Gano was at one time the barrier. Such a fascinating creature," she sighed. "Not a marrying man, andmostdangerous. He sha'n't come between them again."
"You can't interfere if—"
"I can wire my cousin to come and make us a visit, and I will." She bustled out.
While Val was in her first beauty sleep, Harry Wilbur arrived.
The morning was warm and balmy. Val put on her blue muslin gown, thinking rebelliously how Ethan had once said that a serge coat, and skirt, and sailor hat were the proper "togs" for the river.
"Togs" was a proper ugly word for such garments. No stiff tailor-made things for Val! "He said I'd grown prettier," she thought, gayly, as she took a last look in the glass. But it was the thousandth time she had quoted the comfortable assurance to her happy heart.
She met the unexpected Harry at breakfast with such apparent cordiality that Mrs. Ball was slightly perplexed, even slightly disappointed.
"Now, what are we going to do to-day?" asked the hostess, in the middle of the meal. "It's such a comfort, Harry, that you happen along at just this moment. A man is so useful in helping to arrange things; and Austin, of course, is too busy." Austin was already at the office.
"I've just had a note from my cousin, Ethan Gano." Val put her hand on an envelope that lay, address downward, on the cloth. "He's at the Wharton House. He'll be here at ten to take me for a row." It had given her acute discomfort to make the announcement, and the look on the two faces opposite did not restore her equanimity.
After an expressive little silence, Mrs. Ball said:
"Yes, it'll be nice on the river to-day. We can all go. I'll see about a luncheon-basket;" and she rang the bell.
Thereafter the conversation flagged. At ten o'clock Ethan duly appeared, spotless in boating flannels and white shoes. There is no more becoming garb for the modern man. Val forgot her discomfiture a moment, looking athim. Mrs. Ball compared her cousin's "business suit" unfavorably with the new-comer's elegance, and promptly set down Gano's grace to his clothes.
Val had been afraid her cousin would be uncomfortably restive under the infliction of the extra couple. Before long she was resenting his too amiable acceptance of the addition to the party. They drove down to the river in the Balls' carryall, Harry and Val in front with the basket, Mrs. Ball and Ethan behind. Gano was laughing and talking with an unusually gracious air. Was Val to believe that under that charming exterior he was burning with the dull rage that kept her silent anddistraite? His unwonted gayety looked suspiciously like relief.
When they got down to the landing it was found that Ethan had already provided the boat and the hamper. But Val told herself that was not the reason that he, as it were, took command of the little expedition. He would always do that. Other people found it as natural as he did himself. Mrs. Ball was to sit in the stern, "and, Val, you take the tiller." When they had pulled a few yards up-stream Ethan shipped his oars, stood up, and slipped off his white flannel coat and waistcoat.
"Will you keep my watch?"
Val nodded. How warm it felt! She put it in her bosom. No movement of her cousin's was lost upon the girl, though her eyes never rested on him. There had sprung up between them again that old, alert physical consciousness that is like a sixth sense.
That the genial, broad-chested Wilbur should appear to advantage out-of-doors was a matter of course. Val had told him once that he was like a great Newfoundland dog—"too big for the house." But the impression made by Gano's skill in open-air pursuits was partly due to a sense of surprise on the part of the on-lookers that this fine-limbed, small-handed, slender-footed creature should be as strong, apparently, as the obvious athlete.
Mrs. Ball talked incessantly about people in society—about her plan for "going to Europe" when Austin shouldhave a holiday; about any and every thing she poured out an unfaltering stream.
During luncheon Val, in sheer desperation, began to show some consciousness of Harry Wilbur's existence. Finding that Ethan seemed not to notice, she redoubled her friendliness and gayety. At last, "Let's go for a walk—you and me," she said, jumping up and going towards the dogwood thicket.
Harry, nothing loath, strode after her. Mrs. Ball felt herself a diplomatist, and began to relax under Mr. Gano's unruffled courtesy. The little match-maker did not know that Val's high spirits went down like foam in a champagne-glass as soon as she was beyond the reach of her cousin's eyes. But she came back smiling and trailing great branches of white dogwood over her shoulder and down her sky-blue gown. She felt it must be pretty, but she got no assurance that Ethan caught the effect. Harry's ingenuous compliments only heightened her hidden wretchedness. The day was a dreary disappointment to the girl. Ethan's apparent satisfaction in it was the most disturbing element of all. Only once did she have a word with him alone, and then not by his arrangement. She left Mrs. Ball and Harry repacking their basket, of which almost nothing had been used, and ran down the bank to help Ethan to put the cushions back in the boat.
"I suppose Julia told you her father was coming up to-morrow night?"
"No. What for?"
"He's chairman of our committee."
"Don't say anything about my being here."
"Really?"
"Really."
"All right. I wish he weren't coming, though."
"Why?" said the girl, preparing to hear her own views set forth.
"Well, you see, the trouble is, old Otway is getting very deaf; he's not really fit for public business any more, and nobody has the courage to tell him. Isn't it appalling theway people cling to things—to the things, too, that we're all forewarned will be taken from us if we stay here long enough?"
She looked at him with a fresh sense of curiosity and wonderment. What a strange new note he put into life! Yet those others laughed and jested with him, and thought him one of themselves.
He took off his jacket again.
"I'll take care of that." She began to fold it. "What's in the pocket?" She put her hand in with a thrill of joy at her audacity, and brought out an old duodecimo of battered calf-skin. "Why, I remember this: it's one of those little volumes that you brought from Paris."
"Did I have it with me—"
"Yes. Have you gone on carrying it about ever since you first came to the Fort?"
"I hadn't seen it for years till the other day. I can't think how it got among my things."
"You've marked it up frightfully. Grandma would scold you if she saw that."
"The book marked me, why shouldn't I mark the book?"
"What does it say here?"
He shook his head.
"Please tell me."
"I thought you had studied Latin."
"Y—yes; I know what the words mean, but I don't know what the sentences mean. Do translate this little bit."
"Nonsense! I might as well have it in English at once."
"You don't like people to know what you read?"
"I don't like people to read what I mark."
"Why not?"
"It's like leaving your diary open. Why should people—"
"I'm not 'people.' Mayn't I know this tiny bit?—'Meditare utrum commodius sit, vel mortem transire ad nos vel nos ad eam.' What's that?"
Ethan only smiled.
"You never gave me back my watch."
"I forgot. No; I can't think why I tell such lies. I didn't forget at all. Oh, here comes Mrs. Ball," she said, with an accent of despair, "and we've not said a word about—"
"Bother Mrs. Ball!" Ethan ejaculated under his breath; and his cousin blessed him.
Val's hostess hurried down the bank, and Ethan handed her into the boat. Harry was left to cope with the basket.
"Now, what are you two arranging for to-morrow?" said the lady, settling herself in the boat.
"We weren't arranging," replied Val; "we were speaking about a book."
She had put the volume back in the pocket of Ethan's jacket.
"There's a dance at the O'Connors' to-morrow night," said Mrs. Ball; "perhaps you'd like to come with us."
She saw herself entering on Mr. Gano's arm.
"Ah, thanks; you're very kind, but I don't go to dances these days."
Mrs. Ball tried to think she was relieved on Val's account, but she couldn't help saying, with an air:
"The O'Connors are among the first people here; they entertain in the most princely way."
"Iwas suggesting a day's fishing down by the Gray Pool," said Harry, appearing with the basket; "it's that place on the Little Choctaw River."
"Nothing could be better," Ethan agreed.
And then he stopped, having caught Val's unenthusiastic glance. Another day to be lived through, cooped up in a boat, she was thinking; or pursued, at all events, by two superfluous people.
"Yes," said Mrs. Ball, "the scenery on the Little Choctaw is very wild and splendid. A cousin of mine—you know, Harry, cousin Bettie MacFadden—she says it's just like some place abroad—in Scotland, I think."
"Oh, really," said Ethan, in his charming way, "I must see that, but we might go fishing on a dull day. If it's as fine as this to-morrow, why not— Don't I remember"—he turned to Mrs. Ball—"that you're a very good horsewoman?"
"Oh—er—well—"
"They were telling me at the hotel you have a ride hereabouts out to some wild park."
"Yes; he means Forest Park Lodge," said Wilbur.
"Let us go there," said Ethan, "and I'll wire them to have luncheon ready."
It was all arranged before they parted, Mrs. Ball salving any prick of conscience by assuring herself it was far better not to seem afraid of this masterful Mr. Gano, with his reputation for being dangerous. It was right, and even politic, not to "leave him out." All that was necessary was that she, Mrs. Ball, should "be there."
"I don't ask you to come back with us to-night," she said, on their return to town. "We have time only to snatch a mouthful before going to a concert."
Mrs. Ball had a sense of playing up with grace and distinction to some imaginary standard of life abroad. "He will find me much more like the ladies he knows in London and Paris than most people about here."
Val had told herself that Ethan had invented the ride so that they should be freer; they would get ahead of the others, or fall behind, and have some time to themselves. But Mrs. Ball started off next morning with Mr. Gano, and ruthlessly rode beside him all the way. Val alternately raged in her heart, and forgot how sore it was, watching one of those two on in front. How well he sat his horse! But so did Harry. What was it in Ethan that distinguished him so from other men, and set him for ever apart? She tried to give it a name while Harry's small-talk trickled vaguely through her brain.
They stopped to lunch, and put up the horses at the Forest Park Lodge.
While they were dismounting, a buggy dashed up with a man and a girl in it. The miserable old mare had been driven to death, and was covered with sweat and foam.
"Brute!" said Ethan under his breath, glowering at the man, who threw the reins round the whip, and helped his companion out.
"Pretty sort of girl to let him drive like that," was Val's comment, as the couple went towards the hotel.
"Never saw so much of a beast's ribs before without the trouble of taking off his skin," said Wilbur.
"My goodness!" added Mrs. Ball, "that's not a horse; it's a plate-rack."
"Look here," said Ethan to the man who was leading their horses to the stables, "you're going to rub this other beast down, I suppose, and—"
"Never have no sich orders from Mr. Joicey," said the man. "That's Joicey." He jerked his thumb after the two figures. "Comes here a lot. Mare looks wuss'n she is. D'ye know that there nag is Blue Grass?"
"Not the filly that won—"
"Yes, siree bob; won a pile fur Joicey's father. Goes like hell even yet."
"Give her a rub down and a feed, and say nothing about it," said Gano, transferring something from his pocket to the man's hand. "For the sake of battles long ago," he added to his companions, seeming to apologize.
As they walked up to the hotel Mrs. Ball ran on volubly about the ill-treatment of animals.
"I like to remember some magnificent thoroughbreds I saw the last time I was in Holland," Ethan said in the first pause. "I fell in with their owner afterwards, a certain Monsieur Oscar."
"That the fellow that trains horses?" asked Wilbur.
"Yes, founder of the Continental Cirque. He'd been all over the world, and was giving his last performance while I was at Scheveningen. When I came across him afterwards, he had sold all the animals and properties of his great show. 'All,' he said, 'except my eight favorite horses.' I asked if he was going to keep them. 'No,' he said; 'I shot them after my last performance. I might have sold them well, but I thought perhaps they mightcome down in the world, and end by going between shafts. No, I cared about 'em, so I shot 'em.'"
"Oh, how could he have the heart!" Mrs. Ball was shocked.
"You should have seen the fellow's face! He had cared. I couldn't help thinking what a lot of room there was in the world for that kind of caring."
"Gracious no, it's too brutal! He should have given them to people who would appreciate them."
"As Mr. Joicey does Blue Grass? You've heard of General Boulanger's celebrated black charger—he's a cabhorse now in Paris. Marshal Canrobert's splendid animal is in the Pasteur Institute at Garches, where it is used for the production of serum. Saint-Claude, too, the winner of the Grand Steeplechase at Auteuil in '90, he's there being experimented upon. No, dear Mrs. Ball, there seems to be just one safe asylum for horses as for men. Hello, there! did you get my telegram?" he called out briskly to the hotel-keeper. "Gano—luncheon for four."
In a moment he seemed to have the entire staff of the place bustling about him, waiters throwing open the windows at his complaint of closeness, putting fresh flowers on the table laid for thepartie carrée, deaf to the appeals of the few other people in the big dining-room, the landlord praying Mr. Gano to remember that he was nearly half an hour before the time.
"Do they know him?" Mrs. Ball whispered to Wilbur.
"Must; or why should they take all this trouble?"
Val smiled to herself, believing it superfluous to dive into her cousin's pocket for the reason; it was there in his face, in his air. It was so, she told herself, that princes walked the world, barriers going down before them, and people vying to do them unasked service. Yes, it was not for nothing she had dreamed about the prince.
The luncheon was a distinct success. It soon became evident that Ethan was making great headway with Mrs. Ball. Her vivacity, and his unwonted responsiveness, had kept the ball rolling merrily. Was he making himself soagreeable, Val began to wonder, that he might be surer of a welcome in West Walnut Street? "Jessie Ball is bent on impressing Ethan," thought the pitiless young observer. "She's growing quite affected"; and she watched her hostess coldly. It seemed to Val a part of Mrs. Ball's desire to play up to some imagined standard of extra punctilio that led her, towards the end of the meal, to pass her purse to Harry under the table, while Ethan wasn't looking, forming with her lips the words "I'm hostess." Val's sense of embarrassment was acute. Ethan wouldn't like it, after ordering things himself. Val knew, too, that if her cousin had not been a rich man, Mrs. Ball's breeding would have appeared better. She would not have troubled about the bill.
Ethan's later amazement when he called for the account, that there should be a discussion as to who should pay for the repast he had ordered, made Val want to get under the table. By so much was she relieved at his giving way before Mrs. Ball's shrill insistence.
"Oh, very well, if it pleases you better so." He jumped up to cut the discussion short. "Send it out after us. And when will you have the horses—in half an hour?"
Mrs. Ball was uncomfortably conscious that her fine straw-colored hair had come out of curl in the wind, there, under the trees. With the indomitable spirit of woman in pursuit of beauty, she was determined to borrow the chambermaid's tongs, and restore the fuzziness with which she had started forth. It was essential, therefore, that she should take time as well as herself by the forelock. She hurried Val up-stairs.
"What a fascinating man!" she said, with a sigh, as she stood before the glass. "Val, dear, I hope you won't lose your heart to Mr. Gano."
"Oh, I've got past that," said the girl, with a misleading air of frankness.
"Well, I'm relieved to hear you say so. There's something about him very magnetic to my way of thinking—positively irresistible." She sighed again. "But he'd make a shocking bad husband, that's one comfort."
"Comfort!" Val laughed a little hysterically.
"Well, now, whathaveI said?"
But Val was hatted and gloved, and ran down-stairs. Ethan was smoking in the porch.
"Where are those funny friends of yours?" he said.
She was up in arms at once.
"You always say my friends are funny."
"And so they are, dear child."
"They're not a bit funnier than my relations."
"Oh, they don't compare."
"How long before the horses will be ready?" said Val, loftily, as one who chafes at a delay, making meanwhile a rapid calculation as to how long Mrs. Ball's work of restoration might be counted on to keep her up-stairs.
"They'll be here presently," said Ethan, throwing away his cigarette.
"Let's go and see." Val led the way round to the back of the hotel. "My friends are perfectly delightful, but I don't mean to let them monopolize every minute of our time."
He looked at her with an odd expression, and then turned away his face. Her heart gave a great leap. They went on to the stable. Wilbur was there. The buckle on Gano's saddle-girth, he said, had got bent. While it was being taken off Ethan moved about, looking in sheds and open doors.
"What are you hunting for?" Val called after him.
"A place for you to sit down. They'll be some minutes repairing that thing."
"You'd better go back to the house," said Wilbur, who was showing the man how to get the metal straight without breaking the tongue of the buckle.
"No," said Val; "I shall go in there, and up those cobwebby stairs, and sit on the hay by the door that opens into mid-air."
As she walked towards the barn-door it seemed to her that her whole existence depended upon whether Ethan followed her.
At the door she turned, and saw him looking after her. Then she went in. Was he coming? oh, was he,washe? She began to mount the stair, but her heart seemed to stay down there on the bottom step. She wouldn't look back again, but there was no sound, no sign. It was not overwhelmingly important tohimto see her alone. She felt the hot tears stinging her eyes. Then the sunshine that streamed into the musty place through the open half of the double door—suddenly it was darkened. She knew it was Ethan on the threshold. He came after her up the narrow seed-strewn stair, that had no banister.
"Don't walk so near the edge," he said, and he came on the outside, pushing her a little towards the inner wall.
They went up side by side, the girl quite silenced by the sense of his nearness. She half held her breath, expecting every second he would say something—something that for her would be momentous. When they had reached the loft, and he had not opened his lips, a disappointment swept over her so acute it was almost humiliation. She waded heavily through the hay to the open door, that looked out on the horses and the group below.
"I can't think what I am to say about this visit, when I get home," she said. "It seems as impossible to tell them I've been seeing you as it does not to say so."
"When must you go?"
He accepted it, then. No crying out against her going, but merely "when." She turned away from the open door, where she could see Mrs. Ball just arrived on the scene making her a sign, and she steadied herself an instant with her hand against the wall in the shadow. The close smell of the hay choked her. Was it like this people felt before fainting? "Oh, why did I come?" she heard herself saying. And then, instead of losing consciousness, an electric sense of life and joy spread through all her body. Ethan's fingers had closed about her hand that had hung so limp at her side. There must have been some virtue in him, for at the touch she was whole again.
"Don't be sorry you came," he said.
"Mustn't I?"
She tried to subdue her gladness.
"No; even though parting is more than I have courage to face."
She waited an instant for what was to follow, and then, "What? I—I didn't hear what you said."
"But there are some things," he went on, "that we must do without courage."
"Ethan"—she turned and faced him with a kind of fierceness like a creature at bay—"if you find you can do that, it will be because you don't care much."
"Don't care!"—his face came closer, his voice was so shaken out of its even cadences it sounded like a stranger's—"don'tcare! Do you know that I never in all my life knew what caring meant till I knew you? Do you know that I'd give everything I have on earth, and every other hope of happiness, just to be able to believe there is no barrier between you and me?"
He stopped. Val's heart was too full to speak on the instant. In the silence Wilbur's voice rang out clear at the bottom of the stairs:
"I say, Val, aren't you ever coming?"
Mrs. Ball asked Ethan to come in after their ride and have a cup of tea. He thanked her, and seemed to accept. They all went into the dim parlor, and when Mrs. Ball had drawn up the blinds old Mr. Ball was discovered asleep in the arm-chair. He woke at the noise, and blinked feebly.
"Why, paw," said Mrs. Ball, "how did you get in here?"
The old man grunted.
"You've dropped your knitting," said Val, stooping and picking up a strip of gray wool-work with needles sticking in it.
He took it, and began feebly moving his rheumatic hands, while Mrs. Ball bustled about making the tea and sending the maid-servant in and out. Ethan turned his back, and looked out of the window. Val suddenly feltthe repulsiveness of the old man as she had never felt it before. She saw that Ethan had taken out his watch.
"It isn't possible it's nearly five o'clock!" he said, as though that were an unheard-of hour for tea. "I'm sorry, but I must get back to my hotel," and almost before Mrs. Ball knew where she was, he had shaken hands and was gone.