The Open Question Part 36

"H'm! I never looked at them myself."

"But do you know why she was so nice about _The H---- Family_?" It was one thing to do justice to her good deeds, but it was no use setting up a false ideal and pretending she was better than she was. "You see, we'd read all the horrid silly little Harry and Lucys and Sandford and Mertons and _Moral Tales_ and things, and I'd begun Bohn's _Wilhelm Meister_."

"Oh, ho!"

"I put down the book while I tied my shoe, and when I looked up she was putting it into the fire."

He laughed.

"But it wasn't _her_ book at all; I got it out of your room underneath the big Brande and Taylor's _Chemistry_. It had your name in it."

"Yes"--reflectively--"I bought it on April 9, 1870."

"Well, it's burnt now."

He was still smiling and stroking his ragged beard.

"I hope she isn't going to keep the big bookcases locked up forever,"

sighed Val.

"She will never like to see Valeria's books knocking about."

"Gracious, no! She _refused_ to lend Mrs. Otway _Helen Whitman's Poems_, because she said it had Poe's notes in it; but I knew it wasn't a bit on account of Poe. It had some of _Aunt Valeria's_ notes in it, and that was why she wouldn't let it go out o' the house. I was awfully ashamed, and Mrs. Otway looked so snubbed."

And still he only smiled.

"She isn't a bit like other people, but sometimes I'm not sorry."

"Never be sorry, my child. Never be so dull as not to realize that the woman who stands at the head of our line gives us our best t.i.tle to honor--and to hope."

Val opened astonished eyes. Her father was indeed forgiving--fantastically generous. He was gazing off into s.p.a.ce now, and his look was strangely lighted.

"She belongs to the heroic age," he said, with a kind of wors.h.i.+p in his face. "She was born before we began to split hairs, and have nerves instead of nerve."

Val couldn't stand it. Her father was worth fifty grandmothers.

"I should imagine she _thought_ she was a pretty fine sort of person."

"She hasn't a notion how utterly she stands alone. I've gone up and down the world for over forty years, and never seen her equal. Her _equal_?"

He laughed derisively, and began to talk of her as he might have talked of Semiramis or Boadicea, only more vividly. It was very annoying. _He_ had come to care about her too, "only more so." But the real blow fell when it came out that he had felt like this all along. Appreciation, fairness were all very well, but this besotted heroine-wors.h.i.+p was a little pitiable. All these years that Val had been so sure he was silently nursing his injuries and modestly contemplating his own superiority, he had been on the side of the oppressor.

"H'm!" mused Val. "I s'pose she was different, then, to her _own_ children."

"Ah yes; I've often observed the softening of late years."

"The _what_?"

"The growing tolerance, the forbearance with my children, that she never showed Valeria and me."

Val's imagination reeled at the thought of what her grandmother could have been like when she was more intolerant than she was to-day. And it was all forgotten and forgiven! Here he was now leaving glittering generalities, and telling story after story of his mother's courage and her wisdom. She did seem to have been a useful kind of parent, and it appeared she had been more generous in money matters than Val had thought.

"And what she did that time she has always done. She never failed anybody who depended on her. I always think of her when I read the lines:

"'Oh iron nerve to true occasion true, ... that tower of strength Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew!'

Try to understand your grandmother, my child," he wound up; "she is the Pallas Athene of our line."

Val did not know that an American is never so happy as when he is vaunting his womenkind. But in her estimation Pallas does better over your chamber door than in an arm-chair looking at you--through you--with a grandmother's spectacles. You forget what a heroine she is when she criticises the way you sit--"A lady never crosses her legs;" and the way you walk--"I used to swing my arms too--very bad habit; you should study repose." And when wrought upon by your too generous-judging father, or by some private discovery of her worth, you burst out: "Oh, I _do_ love you!" it chills you to get for all response: "You _don't_ love me, or you'd behave differently. 'By their fruits ye shall know them.'"

It was no better later on, when, with growing freedom of speech and warmth of feeling, you would ask in an engaging way: "Why don't you love me?" and get for answer: "It's a mistake to think your relations owe you love; you have to earn it from them as you do in the world outside."

Worst of all, and most humiliating to the eager spirit, was it to be "warded off" if you came to kiss her oftener than good-morning and good-night. "We are not a kissing family," she would say; and you cringed under the blow.

No; Pallas Athene was not an unqualified success--as a grandmother.

There were times, indeed, when her shortcomings nearly drove her granddaughter into considering an elopement with Harry Wilbur, the eighteen-year-old son of Judge Wilbur. With mental apologies to her ideal hero, Val had kept up a vigorous correspondence with Harry, pending the time when the superior suitor should carry her off, and save her the trouble and ungraciousness of breaking the pleasant chains that bade fair, as the days went on, to bind her to her gallant young Hercules. Harry Wilbur was captain of the base-ball team, and the darling hero of the entire New Plymouth Seminary. Most of these studious young ladies thought more of manly strength and of that particular grace that is born of bodily vigor than they did of the qualities of the mind.

It was as if, all untutored, they had the improvement of the physique of the race at heart. Julia Otway, for instance, would descant almost daily upon Harry Wilbur's "splendid figure," and how he held his shoulders; how he walked from the hip, and how _easily_ he played the hottest game.

She would give as adequate reason for despising some more wealthy or more intellectual citizen, that she hated men who did uninteresting things for a living or did nothing at all. Val shared this spirit of Julia's to an extent that gave her a pleasant sense of victory when young Wilbur showed her more attention at dances and archery tournaments than he showed the other girls. Besides, this open devotion made Ernest Halliwell sad, and Jerry Otway "mad," and that was highly agreeable. But Harry didn't "care a fip," as Jerusha said, about music, and music was the supreme affair of life until--until--

Every year saw the resources of the Ganos lessening, the problem of life more difficult to solve.

"You see," Val would say, radiant, "it just shows the _need_ for me to study singing and make money."

"You? Ridiculous and most improper! No woman of your family has ever dreamed of taking money for anything she has done."

The following summer--or "on June 18," as he would have said, taking care to add the year, and even the hour--John Gano received a shock. A kindly letter had come to him from his old flame, Mrs. Otway, to say that, although he seemed to have forgotten her, still, for old friends.h.i.+p's sake, and out of affection for Val, she felt it a neighborly duty to tell him in confidence that his eldest daughter was making preparations to run away and be a chorus-girl in New York. Mrs.

Otway's own daughter had been so oppressed by the enormity of the secret, that she had told her mother. Julia had broken open her bank and given all her savings to "the cause." It was understood, too, that Val had other sources of revenue not revealed. However, merely to deprive her of the money might not be sufficient to head her off, as she had been heard to say she was going to New York, if she had to walk there.

John Gano did not break the awful news to his mother. He betrayed nothing unusual in his aspect, as he said to his daughter:

"It's a glorious afternoon! Shall we go for a walk?"

Val was not as enthusiastic as she had been wont to be, but after the fraction of a moment's preoccupied hesitation she answered, brightly:

"I should love it!"

"Come, then."

He caught up his blackthorn stick, and they set off. Val chatted about the school Commencement, about the new archery club, and how "horrid much" the bows and arrows cost.

"I dare say I could make you a set," said her father. "I always made my own cross-bows as a boy."

"I know. And when you were only eight you cut and carved and glued together a perfect model of a stage-coach. You are wonderful about making things; but these big bows have to be of orange-wood, tough and limber, you know."

"Hickory would do."