The Open Question Part 84

"All right," agreed Julia.

"You two can, if you like," said Val.

"You must sing us 'Den lieben langen Tag;' I haven't heard it for years."

"Don't care about it any more." Val gathered up and crunched the hard scorched grains that had remained in the bottom of the bowl.

"Why not?"

"It's absurd to try to sing just after eating pop-corn."

"Nonsense!" said Emmie. "Grandma's reading old letters in the pack-room, so she won't hear. If you'll put away the corn popper, I'll get the key of the piano."

"It's a great pity not to keep up your music," said Julia, as Emmie went off with the empty bowl. "You'll get hopelessly rusty."

"I shall never sing a note as long as I live," said Val, "and I wish you wouldn't bother me about it before people."

Julia stared at her.

"You ought to understand without my telling you. It kills me to do it half and half. I'll forget I ever wanted to have music in my life."

"You mean, I must never ask you to sing again?"

"It's the one thing about the whole matter that hurts most. You see,"

Val said, with an effort to speak in a commonplace tone, "I'm not sulking about it, I'm not angry; I've simply wiped off the score."

"Dear Val, I'm so sorry!" Julia got up and put her arms about her friend. "I didn't realize-- Oh, dearie, how hard it's been for you all this time, when you take it like that!"

"Like what?"

"So--so quietly, so splendidly," said Julia, vaguely.

"Oh, you needn't think I'm trying to be a heroine," said Val, a little defiantly; "it's just that I prefer not being a bungler when I know that if I'd had half a chance--" She choked suddenly, and flung herself down before the fire with her face hidden. Julia kneeled beside her, murmuring sympathy.

"I think such a lot about my aunt Valeria these days," said Val, sitting up presently and wiping her eyes. "This was her room, you know."

Julia nodded, looking round upon the walls.

"She painted these things, didn't she?"

"Yes," said Val. "Ain't they awful? It would half kill my grandmother to hear anybody say that, and yet it's her fault that they're awful. You know she wouldn't let Aunt Valeria go away and study when she was young.

s.h.!.+"

Mrs. Gano's voice was heard outside the door calling Emmie to hunt for a certain portfolio. She came in, looking through her spectacles at some papers in her hand. She was heavily shawled and wore gloves (as she did constantly now), and she had an old white Indian scarf over her head.

The broche ends hung down to her knees. She looked up sharply from the yellowed papers as she came in. The two girls jumped to their feet. Mrs.

Gano greeted Julia cordially.

"Do you want us to go?" asked Val. "I brought Julia in here because there was a fire."

"Certainly don't go," said Mrs. Gano. "I only came in for Valeria's little desk."

Val helped to take off the carefully made cover that fitted over it.

Between the cover and the desk was something lying flat, carefully done up in tissue-paper. Mrs. Gano opened it and smiled, recognizing the scrawl on the square of card-board.

"Ah! Valeria's first attempt at a portrait of her father! She was a mere baby." The old eyes beamed through the gold-bound spectacles, tender with memory. "Her brother Ethan laughed at her, and said it was more like the pear-tree than like their father--you see what he meant." She laughed gently. "But Mr. Gano comforted Valeria, and said, 'It's quite like enough, my dear. I've no desire to have my daughter a limner.'"

"Do you know, I can never get over the idea that 'limner' is something immoral--indecent," said Val.

Mrs. Gano smiled reflectively. "Neither could your grandfather. That was the dash of Puritan in him."

"Oh, but I mean the mere word. You told us that story when we were children, and I didn't dare to ask; but I was sure it meant something horrid, like some of the words in the Bible that look quite innocent and yet mustn't be used in general conversation."

"Not at all," said Mrs. Gano, with a dignified air. "Your grandfather was merely agreeing with Dr. Johnson that portrait-painting was an improper employment for a woman. 'Public practice of any art and staring in men's faces is very indelicate in a female,'" she quoted, but she smiled again. "If your grandfather had lived, none of you would ever have had a drawing lesson. I am more liberal about these things."

Val flashed a covert look at Julia. John Gano and others had filled in the dim outlines of Valeria's life, and the things she had left behind were eloquent in a way their creator never dreamed, and would bitterly have resented. Mrs. Gano was lifting up the desk.

"Let me carry it in for you," said Val, preceding her grandmother with the little rosewood box.

As she came back Julia heard Val in the hall dismissing poor Emmie and her piano key with short shrift. She closed the door sharply, and confronted her friend with ominous eyes.

"How my grandmother can bear to be so much in that room!"

"Without a fire on a day like this?"

"Yes; but anyhow, it's horrible in there."

"I thought you used to love it when she let you in."

"Yes, when I was little, and didn't understand. It's full of dilapidated things that belonged to dead people. Ethan's father's fiddle--smashed.

My father's patent lamps--none of 'em work. Our grandfather's walking-sticks, very tired-looking, leaning dejected against the wall under a faded dirty picture of the Baptist college he built--it's a Roman Catholic hospital now. And then that thing of Aunt Valeria's--that's the worst of all!" She came nearer, and crouched down on the rug beside her friend.

"What do you mean?"

"A pile of what used to be modelling clay. It's quite black now, but if you see it in one particular way a face seems to look dimly at you out of the dust, and, oh! it's the sorrowfullest face I ever saw. It's the face of somebody who hadn't a chance."

"What is it like?"

"My opinion is it's Aunt Valeria's face, but sometimes--sometimes it looks like me."

Neither spoke for awhile. Val sat huddled together staring into the blaze.

"_She_ used to lie on the rug here before the fire, too."

The girl threw back her head like one shaking off an evil dream, but her eye was suddenly arrested.

"I wonder what she thought of Mazeppa."

"Mazeppa?" echoed Julia.