The Open Question Part 27

Venus appeared with perturbed countenance, out of which all genial companionableness had fled. Yes, that was the kind of face an executioner might wear.

"Take Miss Val up-stairs and get her ready for church."

Venus took hold of the child none too gently, and pulled her, wriggling vainly, up the long staircase. It was no use to cling feverishly to the banisters; it only hurt her hands. Half-way up Venus stopped for breath.

Val looked back to see if her grandmother was still there. Yes; leaning exhausted against the frame of the door, with her handkerchief to her lips. Now Venus was dragging her on again. In a fresh access of rage the child put her chin over the banisters and screamed:

"All the time they're doing the 'I b'lieve,' I shall go like this." She shook her head with such pa.s.sionate dissent that her shock of wild hair swirled madly back and forth in a cloudy circle, completely hiding the mutinous, flushed face of the infidel.

Very soon after the formal removal of Emmie and her effects to her grandmother's bedroom, Val gave up the last lingering shred of hope that she might ever, while these misunderstood days of childhood lasted, propitiate the powers that be. She was always feeding her imagination in secret with stories of the ultimate love and adoration, not only of the suitors and heroes who should line her path later on, but of her family, too. They and the entire community should adore her one day for something wonderful and n.o.ble that she was going to be and to do in that fair future when she should be grown up and great and good.

Meanwhile there were moments when this sense of present outlawry brought with it a fierce and splendid joy. It endowed even a down-trodden child with a superhuman courage. Such a one might even go and plump herself down in the great red chair of state, and rock violently back and forth in a wild abandonment of wickedness, while Emmie stood transfixed and gran'ma's awful eyes made lightning. An outlaw so brave, she could narrate unmoved that she had taken a ride in the milkman's cart. And he had been "so perlite as to ask me how was Grandmother Gano." This horrible insult on the part of the milkman was duly punished, but Val had a momentary sense of having "got even." In the South--in any civilized community, Mrs. Gano would have told you--you did not call people "old"; it had foolishly enough come to be a term of reproach, or at least of scant respect, fit only for "any old thing" of no account.

Therefore, let alone the "owdacious" familiarity of asking after a lady as "Grandmother" So-and-so, you couldn't even with decency distinguish the elder lady from her daughter-in-law by asking after old Mrs.

So-and-so. In the South, where manners were still understood, you said "senior" and "junior," or, among the better cla.s.s, you called the son's wife "Mrs." So-and-so, and you called the head of the family "Madam."

"Grandmother Gano, indeed! I'll grandmother him!"

It was a great score, too, when Julia Otway, Jerry's nearly two years older sister, a.s.sured Val that that common term of reproach "Grannie,"

was a corruption of the ancient and honorable t.i.tle Gran'ma. Inseparably a.s.sociating the word with the drunken rag-picker, "Ole Granny Gill," and the scathing juvenile satire, "Teach your granny to suck eggs," etc., Val determined on the next provocation to introduce the subject at home.

She found occasion to dilate on the virtues of Julia Otway's grandmother. This was a shrunken and timid old lady, who sat unnoticed in the corner, clicking her knitting-needles, and usually saying nothing. When she did speak it was found her speech was odd, and the children laughed.

"Nearly everybody else's gran'ma knits stockens," Val observed one day, with critical eyes on the eternal book open on Mrs. Gano's knees.

"You know very few grandmothers," said the lady.

"I know Julia's. She's _so_ nice. I don't wonder Julia and Jerry like her."

This elicited nothing.

"She's the _kindest_ person. She keeps a little chest o' drawers chock-full o' doughnuts and winter-green candy."

"Very strange use for a chest of drawers. Is the lady right in her head?"

Val, very indignant: "Goodness gracious! mercy me! I should think so!"

"I've told you not to use those exclamations."

"No, you didn't say--"

"Do I understand you to be contradicting me?"

"You said I wasn't to say 'Oh, Lord!' nor 'Gee-rusa-lem!' nor 'Dear me suz!' nor 'Holy Moses!' I don't see what there's left to say."

"I said let your speech be 'Yea, yea,' and 'Nay, nay.' You are not to bring sacred names into common talk. The Jews of old had a proper instinct for these things. They never uttered the name of Jehovah even in prayer. No Jew would step upon a piece of parchment, for fear it might be inscribed with the name of G.o.d. It is impious to call upon the mercy of the Most High on trivial occasions."

"I don't call on Him--never."

"Yes, you do, when you use those expressions. G.o.d is 'gracious'; He alone is 'goodness.'"

Silence; then Val, recovering and returning to the attack:

"Jerry's grandmother--"

"Jerningham Otway's grandmother knows as well as I do that this is a turbulent and stiff-necked generation, without fear of G.o.d or reverence for authority. _Her_ remedy seems to be effacement for herself and bribes for her young barbarians. But"--she had risen, and was towering--"I'd have you know, my lady, _I'm_ not a doughnut grandmother."

Val thought it time to depart. She moved briskly to the door, sending over her shoulder a Parthian shot:

"Julia calls her gran'ma "Granny," and so do lots o' people. It seems it's the reg'lar name."

Thereupon she took to her heels, for even outlaws know limits.

At a safe distance she would speculate darkly: "I wonder if she knows I hate her. Oh yes; it would be a waste of breath to mention it. She knows, and she doesn't care--she's that hardened."

It was clear at such times that this Ishmaelite's hand must be against every man, and every man's hand against her. All consideration of decent restraint had been flung to the winds. She had turned her back on the hallowed customs of society, and joined the iconoclasts of earth. She would even at times plant her elbows on the dinner-table before everybody, with a wild, despairing sense that nothing mattered forever any more. n.o.body loved her. Even her father didn't want her about him since his relapse. He said she came in like a whirlwind on the rare occasions when she was admitted to his room. She should never forget that day when he said: "Why can't you be quiet and good like Emmie?"

_Like Emmie!_ Val fled to the wilderness, and in the neighborhood of the barberry-bush flung out her arms and apostrophized the heavens. She talked a great deal to herself in those days--arraigned society, and used long words with vague meaning, but studied accent and overwhelming effect. However, in spite of the difficulty of life, Val found it an exhaustless mine of interest. Being naughty alone was full of palpitating excitement. Besides, she was much better than her family realized; that of itself was curious, and at times sufficient. At any rate, she was not, as she frequently observed to the scarlet barberries--she was not a sniveller. Fortunately, it did not occur to her that the circ.u.mstance might be less creditable to her than she fondly imagined.

Her quarrel with domestic conditions lent a fine tragic interest, in her own mind, to a life that was deep-rooted in joy. It was impossible not to be happy, such a splendid world as it was--a world with skipping-ropes and a stolen jack-knife in it; a world where an awful jolly boy lived on the other side the osage-trees, and liked you better than that favorite of fortune who had a pet monkey; a world with wild tracts below its terraces where grandmothers ceased from troubling, and hard-pressed heroines could hide and talk out loud. A new house building in the next lot, with ceilings open to the sky, and instead of common floors, great beams where a child who "never was 'fraid" could walk up and down with its heart in its mouth; blocks to be picked up, and a kind workman to talk to when it was cold and gran'ma wasn't patrolling the north side of the Fort. Even for rainy afternoons there were the beloved _Scottish Chiefs_; there were jack-stones, and a family next door who owned a barn. Oh, a _splendid_ world, where you got twelve winter-green drops for a cent, and could play on your father's fiddle in the back hall! Hooray! it was a good plan this being born.

CHAPTER X

One peculiarity of life at the Fort was that although visitors in general were in high disfavor, everybody, from Mrs. Gano down to Jerusha--especially Jerusha--was always hoping for a visit from cousin Ethan. And he never came. The last vacation before Val's arrival Emmie said he had had to go with the Tallmadges to Bar Harbor. This June he couldn't come, because his aunt Hannah had died, and his grandfather was alone; but he thought he might come "later on." Now that the maples were scarlet and gold, he wrote regretfully, saying that, after all, he had to go back to Harvard without any holiday. He sent his love to his cousins, and the annual photograph--which she had commanded to be taken each year--to his grandmother. She had a row of them on the mantel-piece in her room. When the new one came like a falling leaf each autumn, she spent anxious days deciding which of the old ones should go in a drawer to make room for the latest. There were three that never yielded to any new-comer, however beguiling. Ethan's cousins, it must be admitted, who were ardent admirers of the more recent pictures, thought little enough of Mrs. Gano's favorite three.

The first was of a child about three years old in his night-gown--a dreamy little face framed in a halo of curling hair. Yes; it was more like an angel than a flesh-and-blood boy, but it was yellowed and faded, and not taken at an interesting age, so his two cousins thought.

The next was a very solemn little chap with a tiny pail in his hand, dressed in a kilt, and wearing a wide white collar, seeming to labor hopelessly with a wooden spade in a world of unmitigated woe.

The third had been taken in Paris with his school friend Henri de Poincy, and he had on "funny French clothes," but he held his slender figure very easily erect, and without seeming to remember he was having his photograph taken. He had written from Neuilly to his grandmother:

"I always think of my summer at the Fort when I go to have your picture done."

If that were the case, this time the remembrance must have been a gracious one, for his dark little face was lit, expectant, beautiful.

"Why did he go to France?" Val had asked.

"Oh, some nonsense about accent, as if the only accent to be considered was the French." Mrs. Gano threw back her head. "And then a cousin of the Tallmadges married a Frenchman, a man called De Poincy. The mother died, and left a boy--"

"That awful little ape in the pho-- I mean Henri?"

"Yes; Henri, a _very_ nice boy."

Mrs. Gano would not have prolonged the conversation, but Emmie said:

"I'm sure he's nice. Cousin Ethan's letters always say beautiful things about Henri. _Do_ go on."

"I've told you scores of times."