The Open Question Part 61

"But we won't get wet on the veranda."

"No, not _on the veranda_"--but seeing Julia home was a different matter.

"It's your bedtime, Val," interposed Mrs. Gano--"and long past yours, Emmie. Ethan, you must not demoralize the children."

He laughed, and went out by himself.

"Ethan forgets himself," said Mrs. Gano, with low-voiced indignation.

"Imagine his asking a French girl, or a young Boston lady, to come out at this hour--_while he smoked_!" If it had been while he did a little murdering, she could not have looked more horrified. "He must not think manners are superfluous here!"

Val undressed by the open window, where she could smell the ascending smoke, and then she cried under the bedclothes for what seemed to her a long, long time.

CHAPTER XX

Val's unwonted silence and aloofness the evening before had not been lost upon her cousin. He recalled these unaccustomed manifestations the next morning, smiling to himself, and promising his jealous little relative amends. The day, scarce well begun, beheld him on the way to a discovery that he kept on making for years: while you were occupied in realizing that Val Gano was hurt or disappointed, she was apparently getting over it with such despatch that, as you approached with suitable looks of sympathy, lo! she would advance to meet your condolence with banners flying and trumpets blaring, so to speak, obliging you hurriedly to readjust your expression, in order fitly to greet a person so entirely pleased with the course of affairs.

But to think Val miraculously expeditious in "getting over things" was hardly to go to the root of the matter. She did not get over disappointments; she remodelled them in her imagination till they were strokes of luck in disguise, or, at the very least, stepping-stones to some dazzling victory. As she lay in bed in the early morning, she redressed the unequal balance of the night before. After all, Julia wasn't going to have the world-resounding triumphs that awaited Val.

Poor Julia! let her enjoy her little hour of drawing-room success; and Val sailed away into a realm of glory, carrying cousin Ethan in her train, and making her toilet to the sound of cymbals and hosannas.

As the breakfast-bell rang, she burst open her bedroom door and went flying down-stairs three steps at a time.

"What's happened?" said Ethan, as he came down behind her, reminded suddenly of his old friend Yaffti, the patron demon of the stair. All that had "happened" apparently was that Ethan had grown decrepit, else why not go toboganning down the banisters to breakfast, or turn a few somersaults along the hall by way of beginning the day? "In honor of what saint is that?" he called after her, as Val cleared the last three steps with a leap and a bound.

"In honor of St. Suns.h.i.+ny Morning," answered the girl, turning a radiant face over her shoulder, and waiting for Ethan to overtake her.

"Thought you told me yesterday you didn't take any interest in the weather. Oh dear, no! never noticed it at all."

"I don't care a bit whether the old sun s.h.i.+nes or not; can't think what people mean, to go bleating about the bad weather as they do. As if it _mattered_?"

"And yet it's 'Hurrah!' and three steps at a time for a suns.h.i.+ny morning."

"Only said that for an excuse--not to tell you the real name of my patron saint."

"But do. Tell me what's your pet superst.i.tion, and I'll tell you mine."

"Honest Injun?"

"Yes."

"Well, my pet superst.i.tion--only it's _not_ a superst.i.tion--is, that I was born lucky."

"Oh! what's the sign?"

"Sign? Nothing outward and visible, just an inward and spiritual grace.

You needn't jeer; it's quite true. I'm _sure_ I'm lucky. Now I've told you my great article of faith, what's yours?"

But Emmie appeared at that juncture, and Val was secretly pleased that Ethan postponed his answer. Breakfast was already late, and still they waited some time before any one else came down.

Presently Aunt Jerusha appeared with a coffee-pot and a smoking plate piled high with something brown and golden.

The girls received her with a round of wild applause.

"Hi! flannel-cakes--flannel-cakes!" and they executed a war-dance round the popular favorite, who "took her call," so to speak, as pleased as any star-actor at having brought off some n.o.ble appeal to the great warm heart of the populace, which ever beats true, etc.

"Law sakes! de way dey goes on!" The black woman stood laden and smiling like some ebon effigy typifying plenty and good cheer. Evidently loath to stop the popular demonstrations in her honor, she still urged feebly: "Shucks! go 'long, Miss Emmie, wid yo' teeterin' up and down! Law sakes!

look de way Miss Val kin jump Jim Crow. Yo' gran'ma 'ud be hoppin' mad if she cotch yo' doin' dat ar 'fore folks. He! he! Sakes alive, chillen!

stop dem monkey-s.h.i.+nes, and eat up dis yer firs' batch fo' dey spile."

"Yes, yes." Val cut "Jim Crow" suddenly short.

With a lightning change, taking the place at the head of the table, and adopting a dignified and official air, she poured out the piping hot coffee.

"n.o.body waits for anybody on flannel-cake days," said Emmie, drawing in her chair with a chastened satisfaction.

"Did they give you flannel-cakes in 'Gay Paree'?" asked Val, as she pa.s.sed Ethan his coffee.

"No, they didn't."

"I suppose," she said, incredulously--"I suppose it's much gayer in Paris than it is here?"

"It's not gayer than this so early in the morning."

He looked at the confident, shadowless face, and instead of comparing it with Mademoiselle Lucie's _ingenue_ countenance or any beauty of the _salon_ or the stage, memory unfairly conjured up Mary Burne and her despair-whitened features as she harangued her dingy followers. "Not so early in the morning!" Even when the lamps were lit there were places in Paris not so gay as this.

To speak by the card, there were people everywhere, rich and poor, a good deal less pleased with the world than Val Gano. Ah yes! this was why she specially interested him. It was a satisfaction to have stumbled on the explanation, for she was surprisingly much in his thoughts, this untutored child, with her bland belief in the world and in Val Gano. She was a kind of pleasant anodyne to a mind over-full of misgiving, overcharged with fear of life's panther-like capacity for quick-leaping revenge.

It was the first morning since Ethan's arrival that his uncle did not appear.

No, he had not had a very good night, Mrs. Gano said, when at last she came in. She changed the conversation abruptly, and went up-stairs when the letters were brought, having scarcely tasted breakfast. French postmark! A letter from De Poincy; not very long, and not much news. He wrote chiefly to ask when Ethan was coming "home" to France.

"I am wondering if you had the courage to carry out your bold design of hunting up your poor relations in the West. If you did, I'm sorry for you. I see it all from here. The provincial setting which all your democracy won't prevent from getting on your nerves, the fervor of the poor relation's devotion, the bottomless pit of his need, the unblus.h.i.+ng designs on every single woman's part to marry you, will, I fear and trust, send you back to us with a chastened spirit and a decent regret for your folly in taking exception to Mademoiselle Lucie's charming way of playing the universal game. She, by-the-way, is lost to you forever, having just married a wealthy English brewer. But there are other Lucies over here, ready to hold out their pretty hands in welcome as soon as you weary of the crudities of the New World."

Ethan looked up with a smile at his poor relations, thinking how badly they played their parts.

"What conspiracy are you two hatching?" he said.

The two sisters, who seemed not, as a rule, to have much in common, were whispering with great animation.

"Let's tell him," said Emmie.

"No," said Val, getting red.