The Open Question Part 66

"They always do," said John Gano, shaking his forefinger in the air.

"They always _have!_" With that he brought his clinched fist down on his knee. "If you can't hoe your row yourself, don't call in a man to help you. He'll end by helping himself. You'll have saved the hoeing and lost the row. But the average American won't do anything himself that he can get another man to do for him."

No wonder, thought Ethan, that the foreign visitor to these sh.o.r.es has such difficulty in cla.s.sifying American opinion. Here, under the same roof, within the bonds of the closet kins.h.i.+p, were to be heard the old views of "the dominant race" from Mrs. Gano, and here was her own son railing.

"n.o.body is content any more to work his own land or learn a trade; everybody must scramble for the big money prizes, the privilege of being an _employer_ of labor."

It was a deed of some daring to interrupt the flow of masculine talk, but Val sat down on the bottom step of the stairs, saying firmly:

"Americans can't help being ambitious. They know there's a great deal to do."

"There _is_ a great deal to be done; but the American has mistaken notions as to what. The American artisan thinks his son must aim at being a boss, if not being President. The farmer thinks he's doing his share when he hires hands and sends his own boys to swell the stream of clerks and town-strugglers. The infection seized on the women about thirty years ago."

"Stick up for us," whispered Val's voice behind Ethan.

"The result is," her father went on, "it's harder to find in America to-day a good cook or chambermaid than to find a woman musician, novelist, linguist, or painter."

"Say something," admonished the low voice from the bottom step.

"I imagine," the perfidious Ethan remarked, "that there are accomplished persons on both sides the sea who are ready to excel in any art except the art of being of use."

"Exactly. These people no doubt exist everywhere, but they should be swept off the face of America." Val looked out anxiously past the sheltering form of her cousin. "Farmers', tradesmen's daughter's all over the land are giving up house-work"--Val withdrew her head and sat in obscurity--"giving up field and dairy work. Their foolish fathers buy them pianos, buy them novels; and able-bodied young women idle away their days in rocking-chairs, breeding discontent and disease."

Val appeared to be making preparations to retire.

"You think," asked Ethan, "there is any application in the fact--to--a people of another cla.s.s?"

"Most a.s.suredly. What the ignorant ignorantly despise, we must elevate.

We must show them the bottomless vulgarity of their view." The restive movement on the bottom step augmented his ire. "I a.s.sure you the market cries aloud for house-keepers, nurses, laundresses, sempstresses. We are not in need of any more poetesses, department clerks, _singers_."

He had got up and was glowering unmistakably at the girl who had risen from the bottom step.

"It's too bad, father, your going back on my singing, just because I forgot to mend your coat. I thought you were an invalid in bed. I didn't expect you to climb trees to-day."

"To-day has got nothing to do with it, although I _am_ surprised and disappointed that you want your grandmother to engage some raw Irish girl--"

"Only while we have company."

"Company!" he said, bristling more than ever. "What can 'company' get but profit out of seeing that _we_ think n.o.bly of work; that we're ready to do our part towards turning domestic and industrial service from an ugly slavery into a beautiful and n.o.ble privilege."

"Come, Emmie," said Val, "let's get our things off."

The two girls simultaneously took to their heels. John Gano leaned back in the chair, coughing feebly, all his animation spent.

"She has set her heart on my taking her East to learn singing," he said, in a low, dispirited voice. "I've been feeling to-day I may never go East again."

"You are not strong enough just yet," began Ethan.

"I wish Val would get over this craze about opera, especially if I'm not here. I've been thinking a great deal about it to-day. If she could take up some of the duties here--" He looked round helplessly, as if to find something she might with advantage begin upon.

"Oh, we must get the opera idea out of her head. I am quite of your opinion there."

"Ha, really?" said John Gano, with a relieved, almost incredulous air.

"You think there's something in what I say?"

"Indeed I do."

"_Most_ a.s.suredly." He got up with renewed energy. "I'll tell her that the women who take up the despised craft of home-making and home-keeping will be not only the true artists of the future, they'll be the only order of working-women, never in want of a place."

As Ethan went to his room he indulged the cynical suspicion that his uncle had some definite vision of the particular home that Val was to labor for and ornament, and it was not the Fort. Well? He smiled. Pshaw!

"Am I growing old, that a little school-girl should get hold of me after all my escapes?" For so much had his social experience warped him that he seldom thought of marriage now, save as of something others plotted and which he must frustrate and elude.

Val! He laughed to himself. Absurd! But his face had little amus.e.m.e.nt in it, and less irony than he would have credited. "The older men grow," he said to himself, "the more the fainter-hearted among them shrink from age, the more they wors.h.i.+p youth. Now, if I were fifty I might be in danger."

Going down, after writing some letters, an hour or so later, he heard "the little school-girl" coming behind him, and then stopping suddenly.

"That you, Val?" He stood waiting. No answer. She had gone back into her room. He stood stamping his letters under the hall lamp.

Val's head presently peered down from the top of the stair.

"Yes, I'm here," said Ethan, provokingly.

"I'm looking for one of the servants," Val said, descending with dignity.

Ethan looked up, laughing at her over the banisters.

"What makes you look so solemn?" he asked.

"My sister's got a sore throat, and I can't find the stuff for a compress."

"No use telling me you're such a sympathetic sister as you make out.

What's the _real_ matter?"

Ethan had come down-stairs, intending to be more discreet than ever in the future. De Poincy was no doubt right--even here it was necessary to be _en garde_. With this idea dragged well into the foreground again, what demon of perversity made him lift a hand above the banisters and hold the girl's fingers fast to the polished rail? It was the first time he had touched her. He was rather startled at the commotion set up in his own nerves by the trifling action, but it was mainly, he a.s.sured himself, the reflex of the evident agitation of the girl. She had dropped her eyes, and he saw her upper lip tremble.

"What's the real matter?" he repeated, letting go her hand, not all of a sudden, but drawing his own across it lingeringly; "I thought you were always happy."

"Happy!" she said, making a gallant effort to recover her usual manner.

"Well, it's n.o.body's fault if I am."

"Now that I come to look at you, I believe you _are_ happy, all the same."

"Course I am; but it's only because I was born that way and can't get out o' the habit." She came on down-stairs.

"Your father was quite right, you know, in what he said this afternoon."

"Oh, he didn't really mean it. It was partly just arguing--father does so love arguing--and partly because Emmie told on you. I've been saying she deserved to have a sore throat."

"Told on me?"