The Open Question Part 20

"You--_you_ are too busy. I'm afraid you don't receive pupils at your own studio," she said, timidly.

"No, I do not receive pupils as a rule; but I will receive you, signorina."

That was the end of lessons at the Cooper Inst.i.tute, and the beginning of the brief, but best, happiness Valeria's life was to know.

Some indiscreet allusion to the change in a letter Valeria or her brother had written to their mother brought Mrs. Gano in hot haste to New York again. She found Valeria a different being--but she also found Signor Conti and a lonely studio in a side street, where her daughter worked alone with this foreigner, modelling "the members of the human body," while the sculptor worked on his "Lady at the Bath." It was all unspeakably objectionable and un-American. This was no fit _milieu_ for a Gano. It wasn't a seemly place for any lady. Valeria must come home.

She told her so the same night. No, Valeria could not do that.

"Why? Are you so attached, then, to this Italian image-maker?"

Valeria went home to the West the next day. The following winter she died.

Little Val was nearly seven when she woke up one morning and was told that the baby had died in the night. Then it was true, this thing she had heard about people dying. Her excitement and curiosity were infinitely greater than her sorrow. Had he gone to heaven yet? No, he was in the cold, uninhabited "best" room, where n.o.body but strangers--guests and grandmothers--had ever slept. She made Nanna hurry through the bath and dressing. The nurse was crying. Val observed her critically.

"Isn't heaven a nice place?" the child asked; and a vague uneasiness seized her with regard to this much-vaunted reward of merit.

"Av coorse, av coorse--the most beautiful place ye can think av. The streets are all gowld," said the woman, with quivering face.

"I must go and see mamma," the child said.

But she had to pa.s.s the "best" room door. She couldn't get by, but stood there rooted before it. She listened, advancing her small ear nearer and nearer. No sound. Then she put her eye to the key-hole. But the key-hole did not command the bed. She glanced over her shoulder--n.o.body near; the house silent. She turned the k.n.o.b softly and went in, shutting the door behind her; then quickly reopening it, and leaving it prudently ajar.

She tiptoed to the bed. Behold, the coverlid lay smooth, and no little dead child there at all. Then he _was_ gone to heaven. If she'd got up a little earlier she might have seen the angel flying off with him. He hadn't left the window open; the very blind wasn't drawn up. What was that on the table? Something white, laid over something strange, and--two little sandalled feet stuck stiffly out!

_On the table!_ It couldn't be the baby lying on the hard marble slab!

The cruelty of the idea made her cold. Slowly she came nearer. She circled, fascinated, round to the other side. Yes, a gleam of the baby's yellow hair. The white cloth over him was a little awry, but it covered the body and hid the face. Horrible to have the air shut out; she felt stifled at the thought. He was lying on a pillow, she could see. But there was something inhuman in leaving a baby like this. And they had been so irritatingly careful of him before, never left him alone a moment; neglected her on his account; wouldn't even let her hold him--oh, _so_ carefully; and now--this! Nothing, perhaps, in all the strange circ.u.mstance--not even the subsequent burial--impressed the child so painfully as this fact of the baby being laid unguarded on a table, as though he had been no more than a book. This it was that by one stroke seemed to cut him off from fellows.h.i.+p, that suddenly degraded him from his high estate of life and lordly consideration. This "death"

was evidently a far stranger thing than going to heaven.

A feeling of intense commiseration for the little brother swept over her. She came nearer, crying. "Poor! poor!" she whispered. Why had they shut out the air? She lifted her hand and turned the linen down from the waxen face. Her tears dried on her cheeks as she stood staring. He might be only asleep. How had they come to be so sure, and lay him unguarded on a table, when he might wake and-- She saw in a flash how she would earn the grat.i.tude of the family. She would wake him, and she, who hadn't been allowed to hold him, would carry him to her mother. And how glad they'd all be! And it would be _her_ doing.

"Baby," she said; "baby, wake up!" She put her hand on the body, and withdrew it quickly. He felt so strangely unlike life and tender babyhood. An evil dread took hold on her. She strove some moments, battling with new suspicions and vague fears. "Poor little baby! poor little baby!" she whispered, tiptoed up, and kissed his cheek. Violently she started back. Who that ever, as a child, has felt that first chill contact with the mysterious enemy--who does not remember the formless horror it conjures up in the unprepared young mind? This, then, was death. She walked backward to the door, staring at the dead face, feeling that cold touch on her lips spread like a frost through her body. She must go quickly and get into her mother's lap. With her hand on the door, "Poor! poor!" she repeated with a sob, still looking back at the face. "You can't come and get warm in mother's lap any more; _you've_ got to go to heaven." Had they any idea how cold the baby was?

Should she go and get his quilted travelling-coat? Was it any use? A faint dawning of the hopelessness of any earthly service to the dead made her resolution waver, and, with that, a horrible weight descended on her heart. She drew a hard breath, ran back to the table, and knelt down before it with folded hands and trembling lips. "Forgive me, baby,"

she whispered, "'bout the yellow ball. If I'd known this I wouldn't have taken it away." She scrambled to her feet and ran out as fast as she could, leaving the door ajar.

She was going up to bed that same evening, full of excitement and speculation, when her father called to Nanna over the banisters to come and help to find the smelling-salts--her mistress had fainted.

"Go to your room; I'll come presently," said the woman; and they shut her mother's door.

They hadn't let her go in since morning. Her mother was ill, they said, but that was a pretence; she was always ill. The reason Val was shut out to-day was because her grandmother had arrived that morning, and her grandmother was her enemy. She was in there now.

On every-day occasions Val would have contested the matter; but, grandmothers apart, there was a great deal to think about and consider just now.

She sat down on the stairs. She had seen her father crying that day, and the very foundations of all stabilities seemed tottering. Men could cry, it seemed--cry like little children. It was very strange; she had supposed it a thing to be outgrown. For her own part, she had nearly overcome the childish habit. The baby, of course, had cried a great deal; but one's _father_!

Somebody was coming up-stairs behind the servant--a strange man. What was he carrying? Something big, and as s.h.i.+ny as the new musical-box.

She hugged the banisters as the two pa.s.sed.

"What's that?" she said to Matilda.

The servant didn't answer. She and the strange man went by. As Val was in the act of following, her grandmother appeared. She looked at Val a moment, and then called the nurse in a whisper: "Put that child to bed."

To-morrow was the funeral. She should go, she had said.

"No, certainly not," said her grandmother; and Val set her firm little mouth.

After breakfast the next morning, her father went into the room where the baby was, and stayed a long time. The doctor was with her mother.

The doctor was a rude man, with a long yellow-white beard; he had spoken as sternly as if he'd been one's grandmother when Val had said she _would_ see her mother. She lingered now by the "best" room door. Would she hear her father crying again? She hoped she would. There was something so horribly exciting in it; it made her feel as if she should die, and yet she listened eagerly to find out if he were doing it again.

No sound. He came out after a long, long while, and kissed her; his face was wet.

"Run to your nurse, my dear," he said.

She didn't tell him Nanna had been sent out. He smoothed her hair, and then went into her mother's room.

She was thinking a great deal about the baby. Nanna had been telling her more about heaven. The nurse hadn't liked it when the child had asked leading questions about the grave. But Nanna herself had said dozens of times before, "I've buried me husband and three childer." What a curious idea to put people in the dirty, black ground! And the baby! It must be very bad for his pretty white clothes. How awful to have earth on one's face, all over the ears and mouth! She choked a little. But one wouldn't feel it, of course; the real baby was in heaven. He would have everything there. "Yellow b.a.l.l.s, too?" she had asked Nanna.

"He won't want the likes of that," the nurse had said. Nanna was very stupid; as if the baby had ever wanted anything in his life so much as that yellow ball! Conscience p.r.i.c.ked cruelly. She _had_ been selfish and horrid to the poor baby. She fell a-crying. Very likely they didn't have yellow b.a.l.l.s in heaven, and wouldn't know how much the baby loved them, and he mightn't like to ask; besides, the poor baby talked such a queer language, strangers never understood him. A sudden inspiration. It was rather confusing about the real baby in heaven, and the real baby in the "best" room. Wouldn't it be better to be on the safe side? Anyhow, there was that business about Gabriel and the Last Trump and the Resurrection.

They had talked about that in church, and Nanna and mother had said it was true. The dead would surely rise; the baby in the "best" room there would one day come alive. It looked as if there'd be two real babies in the end; but never mind. She flew up-stairs, rummaged the cupboard in the nursery, and came flying down with something wrapped in her ap.r.o.n.

The doctor was in the lower hall talking to her father; she peeped at them through the bal.u.s.ters, then softly on to the "best" room.

She shut the door this time, though more frightened than the day before.

She stopped short in the middle of the room. Too late! the baby had gone. But there was something she'd never seen before. She went close.

How pretty and s.h.i.+ny it was; it smelt like the piano. Why, this was what the strange man had brought up-stairs behind Matilda last night. It was bigger than the musical-box--much bigger. What was in this beautiful, s.h.i.+ny, new thing? She dragged a chair to the table, climbed on it, and looked down into the coffin.

She stood some time motionless; then, hearing a noise in the hall, hurriedly lifted a corner of the baby's frock and pushed a yellow ball down against the padded white satin side.

In spite of the continued "riling" presence of a grandmother in the house, Val made up her mind to be very good now the baby was gone, and be a comfort to her mother. No more fights with Nanna, even over the hair-combing; no defiant refusals to say her prayers. Standing by the cot in her nightgown the evening of the funeral, "I shall say three prayers," she announced, sternly; "and you mustn't interrupt, Nanna."

"Three!" said the nurse, suspicious of such overwhelming piety.

"Yes; I shall say, 'Our Father,' and 'Nower Lamy,' and then one of my own--one I can understand as well as G.o.d. Now! s.h.!.+" She knelt down and recited the two accustomed pet.i.tions, and then, still kneeling there, poured forth some stringent directions to the Lord which horrified the good Christian woman not a little.

After that, Val insisted on going to church, rain or s.h.i.+ne. She read her Bible with vigor and astonishment, belaboring Nanna with difficult questions. Nanna was so ill-inspired as sometimes to appeal in her perplexity to the elder Mrs. Gano. But this lady found to her cost that the course so successfully pursued with little Ethan was doomed to failure here. When she thought to curb the excessive Gano concern about Biblical interpretation by saying, "It is not a book for children," she was met with:

"My Bible says, 'Suffer little children,' and people 'mustn't despise the little ones.'"

Her father began to laugh; she felt encouraged to proceed:

"And says, 'Search ye the Scriptures,' too; nothin' 'bout waitin' till you're old."

"You are too young to understand, even if I should try to explain."

"Why, I understand it nearly every bit," she answered, indignantly, "all except the mizz--I can't find where it says about the mizz."

"The mizz?" repeated Mrs. Gano.

"The mizz?" her father echoed, uneasily. "I haven't read about that myself."

"Well, you've heard about it in church. Didn't you go to church when you were young?"