The Open Question Part 26

It is true she cherished a dream at first of earning her grat.i.tude and admiration by some splendid heroic deed that should cover her grandmother with shame at the memory of the way she had misunderstood and undervalued her descendant. The house would be on fire some day, and Val would "save all their lives"; or a robber would get in in the night, and by a series of thrilling adventures Val would entrap and lock him up in the closet under the stairs, where that silly old Jerusha said there was a ghost; or the ancient nag that sometimes came from the livery-stable to take her father and grandmother out for an airing--this steed would unexpectedly run away some fine day. Val saw herself das.h.i.+ng out of the bushes at the road-side, seizing the bit, and hanging on to it till she brought the frantic animal to a stand-still. Then her grandmother would say: "Dear, brave child, we owe you our lives," etc.

"How I've misunderstood you!" etc. Val would be magnanimous, and forgive everything. She had a fixed intention of saying in reply: "Gran'ma, let the dead past bury its dead." Her grandmother would feel that. But until that day came, how was she to endure all this injustice and oppression?

Emmie was her grandmother's--well, she took Emmie's word about everything, and Emmie counted on that. She didn't play fair, and she was an awful cry-baby; couldn't climb trees, or even run hard without falling down and hurting herself and saying it was Val's fault. Then for the rest of the day her grandmother would treat Val like an outcast, and dock her of Jerry's society. How sickening it was to be told Emmie was the littlest, and delicate! Val herself had at one time been "only six,"

but she hadn't been a sniveller; she had always played fair and never cried. Ask anybody. They'd all say Val Gano _never_ cried. Whereupon she would steal away to the wood-shed, or climb up high in the catalpa-tree, remind herself she had no mother, shed a private tear or two, and tell herself a story.

After all, the only serious blemishes in the scheme of creation were grandmothers and Sundays. Now that Val had renounced religion, she could not but look on the day of rest as an interruption and a time of bondage, when grandmothers and grandmothers' views pervaded creation to creation's cost.

On the third Sunday after the arrival at New Plymouth she announced that she was not going to church.

"I don't want to, either," whispered Emmie. "Let's pertend we're very ill."

"No; let's just say we won't go."

"Better not," admonished the cautious Emmie. "I think my throat is going to be sore."

So Emmie was duly cosseted by Aunt Jerusha, and given delicious black-currant jelly.

Mrs. Gano, hearing rumors of rebellion, had sent for Val. She was dressed and sitting in the big arm-chair before the fire with a book on her knees. It was quite warm, but she couldn't apparently do without a fire and a shawl. She was seldom seen about the house in these days without a shawl. She must have had hundreds--white and black and gray, striped and dotted; silk, cashmere, canton-crepe. Her gowns all seemed to be made of rusty black silk. They were so exactly alike that Val thought for long she had but one. There was always, too, the inevitable and spotless lawn at the throat; no frivolous ruffle or after-thought of tie--nothing set on, extraneous, but smooth white folds that seemed to grow up out of the dress--an integral part of the plain and changeless uniform that was the outward and visible sign of one's grandmother's severe, uncompromising spirit.

"What's this I hear? Why are you not dressing for church?"

"I--I don't feel like going to-day."

"Are you not well?"

"Ho yes"--very contemptuous. "I never get ill."

"Then you must go to church. It's the custom in this house."

"Venie says _you_ go only twice a year. I'll go when you do."

The old lady's eyes blazed behind her gold spectacles.

"You'll go when you are told." Awful pause. "When you are my age you may suit yourself."

"Father hasn't had to wait all that time; he doesn't go now."

"Your father is very ill."

"Didn't go when he was well; that is, _hardly_ ever," added the explicit young person.

"He went regularly as a boy, before he had a house of his own. But I'm not accustomed to arguing with children. Go and get dressed."

Val wavered a moment, then faced about gravely. She planted herself before the old lady, with the wide-apart legs and tense look of one who braces herself to bear the crack of doom.

"I'm sorry to hurt your feelings," she said; "but I'm a infidel."

"What!"

"Yes; father and I are both infidels."

"Hus.h.!.+ you don't know what you're saying."

"Oh yes, I do. He says, 'd.a.m.n it!' when you're not there."

"How dare you!"

"I don't, but father does, so you see--"

"I see that you talk wildly and ignorantly, as well as too much. Go and dress for church."

She had half risen, her eyebrows had risen wholly. She looked singularly alarming. Val retreated backwards to the door, and Mrs. Gano resumed her seat.

"I ain't so igorunt as you think," the child persisted. "The reason I stopped going to church was because my conscience wouldn't let me join in."

Mrs. Gano turned and looked at the child over the back of her arm-chair. There was a gleam of amused tolerance in the steely eyes. Val was quick to detect it.

"You see, it's not worth while to waste the whole morning nearly when the only thing you can join in is a piece they don't do every Sunday."

"Which is that?" asked Mrs. Gano, in an odd voice.

She had turned away again, and Val couldn't see her face now.

"That long piece about the weather."

"The _weather_?"

"Yes--lightnings, and whales, and things. Don't you know that one? It's like this." She put her hands behind her, and shrilly intoned: "'O ye green things, angels and fowls of the air, praise Him and magnify Him for-r-rever. O ye--'"

"That will do," interrupted Mrs. Gano, in a stifled voice.

Val felt snubbed; there was a lot more that, with encouragement, she would have endeavored to do justice to. She felt for the door-handle, but paused again on the threshold.

"Mayn't I go and sit with father?"

"Certainly not; you are to go to church."

"Gran'ma." There was a renewal of courage in the clear little voice.

With a bound she planted herself in front of the old lady's chair. "I _oughtn't_ to go. It's pertending; it's wicked. For I can't say the 'I b'lieve' any more."

Mrs. Gano rose in her wrath and towered. Val stood to her guns, looking up with determined, excited face.

"I used to join in when I was younger: I used to bow, just like mother.

Father never bowed. _I_ don't any more, neither."

Mrs. Gano seized her by the shoulder and propelled her to the door. Wild thoughts of dungeons and burned martyrs flew through the child's mind.

Still clutching the infidel, Mrs. Gano opened the door. In an awful voice she called:

"Jerusha! Venus!"