The Open Question Part 2

And Valeria--she had not been as successful as her brother in shaking off the paralyzing fears and lulling hopes of the old religious view.

But a new pa.s.sion had found its way into her secluded life, altering, shaping, imperiously governing it. It was no sudden love for the hero of a girlish dream, no dedication of dawning woman-life to the wors.h.i.+p of some man, made saint or savior by imagination's magic, no fairy prince's coming, no Romeo calling under her balcony in the night, that wakened this grave-eyed dreamer of dreams to a thrilling sense of life and service. It was that most blessed or accursed summons to rise and join the ranks of those who follow Art. Here in the Western wilds, among conditions grotesquely unpropitious, barren beyond the telling, sordid, if you like, this keen young vision, searching the horizon of a pent-up life, had seen the signal from afar, s.h.i.+ning and beckoning her on.

Valeria at nineteen was lamely, impotently following that Will-o'-the-wisp which, under fairest conditions, may "lead to bewilder and dazzle to blind," and of which you shall say in vain, "He lights you to the swamps of death." The happy followers know the swamps of death are waiting all, but many there be who travel thither without the kind-deceiving light.

Valeria, in common with some other members of her family, had written little verses, chiefly religious; but that was nothing. It had been said long ago in Maryland that the Ganos were born with a pen in their hands.

Like the others, she had given some of her time to music, when her mother was out of ear-shot. She had a smattering of French, a modic.u.m of German, and a few lessons in painting. In the home in New Plymouth there were specimens here and there about the house of work done before she left Maryland: a Melanchthon with a coppery face and a glimpse of hair-s.h.i.+rt, two copies of the portrait of Raphael done by himself, a "Beatrice Cenci," and a "Holy Family." But from the days of inarticulate childhood, with no more than a handful of her native soil and a watering-pot, or a precious lump of putty from the plantation carpenter, she had tasted the tyrannous joy of the creator, fas.h.i.+oning beasts and men.

And now, grown up, exiled to the West, living in poverty, and isolated from all art save that in books, she said to herself that she had been sent into the world to model beautiful forms, and express her restless spirit in enduring marble.

In vain she prayed to be allowed to go away and study--not to Paris, not to Rome: only to New York. She had a small legacy left her by an aunt.

The interest was so little, why not spend the capital in studying sculpture? Her mother, amazed at the proposal, left Valeria no moment in doubt of her determination to crush it.

Valeria's Aunt Paget was with them on a visit when the matter was under discussion. Mrs. Paget was seldom admitted to family counsels, and felt herself something of a stranger in her sister's house. She was the worldly, the frivolous member of her family, who "dressed in the mode"

and "cultivated society." She was surprised when on this occasion the topic proved too much of the "burning" order to be smuggled out of sight.

"Study sculpture! Such a thing is unheard of!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Paget, making wide blue eyes at her elder sister and her niece.

"So I tell Valeria," said Mrs. Gano. "She couldn't go to New York alone, she couldn't live there without a chaperon."

"And even if she could afford it, you need her here. You are always ill nowadays."

"It isn't that," said Mrs. Gano. "I'm thinking of Valeria herself."

"Of course; so am I. She ought to marry."

"I shall never marry!"

Aunt Paget smiled.

"Well, at all events, it won't help you to be chiselling marble."

"Help me to what?"

"To a suitable marriage, of course."

Valeria's dark eyes flashed, but before she could speak her mother said:

"I am not one of those women who are anxious for their children to marry. I shall be more than content if Valeria remains single."

"Well, Sarah, forgive me, but I think it's a mistake. I said so before we left Maryland, when she refused young Middleton. Every one of us was married before we were Valeria's age, and none of us ever _dreamed_ of wanting to go away from our home and study sculpture, or do _anything_ in the least unladylike."

Valeria gathered up her sewing as if to leave the room.

"You must admit," Aunt Paget went on, "there's something unfeminine about sculpture. I'm not sure it isn't even a little irreligious."

"You don't know anything about it, Maria. You never had the least taste yourself for anything but dress and going out."

"Well, you see, that's what makes it so surprising," said the younger sister, in an apologetic tone. "You have always thought me so frivolous, and yet I wouldn't _think_--no, not in my wildest moments--of being a sculptor."

As Valeria left the room, Mrs. Gano looked with pride after the tall, willowy figure.

"You must remember," she said, speaking unusually gently, "the Ganos are more artistic than we Calverts. Valeria has great talents."

But having talent altered little. Valeria beat her wings against the walls of the old Indian fortress all in vain. But she studied books, she got clay for modelling, and tools, and in secret wrought rude images that mocked her dreams. By-and-by she flung the tools aside, and the plastic clay that she had meant to fas.h.i.+on into forms of beauty hardened uncouthly into an unmeaning ma.s.s. An interim of aimlessness and despair of life was followed by a gradual healing of the spirit and restored activity of mind, through nothing more nor less than the power of poetry. Saturated with Keats and Sh.e.l.ley, she took up again her old childish habit of verse-making, but very seriously now, thinking of herself as a poet. Some hint of the way she pa.s.sed her time, some whisper, through servants or others, of the reams of paper she engrossed with verse, got abroad in the town. She was asked to contribute to the _Mioto Gazette_, and was stopped on her way from church, by people she scarcely knew, to hear that her fellow-townsmen were full of curiosity and pride at having a poet among them. She was embarra.s.sed, but not altogether displeased. Not so Mrs. Gano, whose favorite remark about the good people of New Plymouth was that they didn't know a B from a bull's foot. _Of course_ they were impressed that any one in this benighted place should write verse!

"Just tell them the next time they bother you that the Ganos do it by the yard."

It was very difficult to impress this mother of hers, who took so much for granted.

"I think," said Valeria, with dignity, laying down a volume of _Aurora Leigh_--"I think I shall seriously devote myself to literature."

"Ah! then in that case be careful you don't adopt New Plymouth standards."

"I am not likely to."

"I don't know. Nothing is more difficult than to avoid measuring yourself by the people you live among. John is an ignoramus compared to his father, but he tells me he is considered _here_ a highly educated person."

"I think, mother," the girl said, gravely, "that you'll protect me from having too good an opinion of my work."

But the conversation had set her thoughts in a new groove. There was truth in this. She must guard against an ignorant satisfaction in her poems. She must have better standards of style; she must know what the masters taught and practised. She must learn to be more critical than even her critical mother. "The great teachers of the world shall be my teachers," she said to herself, and there sprang up within her a new and fiery curiosity about the cla.s.sics.

She asked her mother to let the Roman Catholic priest teach her Latin, and the request was granted with but slight demur, as an alternative to the pursuit of art away from home. Quietly and doggedly Valeria went on with her studies, teaching herself Greek, and lying long mornings on the floor in the Blue Room, getting by heart the wit and wisdom of men to whom the existence of a creature like Valeria Gano, in such a world as America, would have been harder to grasp than she, unaided, had found the niceties of the historical tense, or tolerance for her masters'

morals.

While the girl up-stairs was patiently learning letters of the pagans, in the room below the mother conned Church History and Biblical Criticism, searching the Creeds and her own unquiet heart for justification and for peace. And all the while about these two absorbed, self-centred women surged the turbulent life of the little town. Gossip was busy with Mrs. Gano from the first, albeit her face was unknown to most of her towns-people--to nearly all who had not seen her in her rare pilgrimages to St. Thomas's. They speculated, too, about the young girl who dressed so severely, and whom one couldn't fancy at a party or a picnic--who, though an irreproachable Episcopalian, learned Latin of Father O'Brien, wrote verses about heathen G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, if report spoke true, and yet sat in church on Sunday with the rapt look of a medieval saint.

It was universally agreed by the neighbors that John Gano was the flower of the flock. He, at least, was an addition to New Plymouth society, being a very rising as well as agreeable person.

There was more than one sore young heart in the town when, in the following year, John Gano came back from a visit to his childhood's home in the South, engaged to marry his cousin Virginia Gano-Lee, just sixteen at the time. His mother, who had never ceased to fear that, despite her vigilance, he might be beguiled into marrying some one of these "ill-mannered Western girls," hailed the idea of further alliance with the Gano-Lees. However, much too big as her house was for her own use, she did not welcome John's natural proposal to bring his wife there to live.

"No; wait till you can make a home of your own," his mother had said.

So it behoved the young man to better his worldly position as speedily as possible. An opening in a bank in New York, with a little larger salary, and prospect of a partners.h.i.+p, took him away from New Plymouth the following year, and left his mother and sister alone in the old house.

CHAPTER III

Naturally so clannish a woman as Mrs. Gano had not let the years go by without much solicitude on behalf of her orphan grandchild. After the death of her eldest son, Mrs. Gano wrote to his mother-in-law, Mrs.

Tallmadge, asking her to send the little orphan to his father's people, or else appoint a time when Mrs. Gano might come to Boston and bring her grandson home. The reply came from Mr. Tallmadge, showing how deeply he and his wife had resented Mrs. Gano's behavior on the marriage of her son. Mr. Tallmadge wrote that his daughter on her death-bed had committed the infant to the care of her own mother, and that Ethan Gano himself had sent his son North under the protection of Mrs. Tallmadge.

He had broken with his own family, and held no communication with them.

It was plain what his wishes were with reference to his son. And the Tallmadges might be depended upon to make good their right to the custody of the child. Several spirited letters were exchanged, and then silence till the close of the war and the news of Mrs. Tallmadge's death. Mrs. Gano then made another attempt to get possession of the boy, but finding his grandfather as resolute as ever to keep him in Boston, she proposed a journey thither. This apparent prompting of natural affection could not decently be thwarted, although Mr. Tallmadge understood perfectly the suspicion and anxiety as to the way the orphan was being brought up, that secured the Tallmadges the honor of a visit from Mrs. Gano.

She declined to make the house in Ashburton Place her headquarters, "having already," she wrote, "engaged an apartment at the Tremont House." Mr. Tallmadge smiled, understanding perfectly.

But if he contemplated with serenity the descent of Mrs. Gano upon Ashburton Place, not so his unmarried daughter and house-keeper, Hannah Tallmadge. With nervous misgiving she looked forward to the coming of this hereditary foe, who, moreover, had the blackest designs upon her darling Ethan. Still, Hannah Tallmadge was a most Christian soul. Short of giving up Ethan, she would do all in her power to exhibit a hospitable and forgiving spirit in the approaching trial. She would do what she could to curb her father's uncompromising bluntness of speech, and would keep him off dangerous topics. It occurred to her that the mere sight of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ on the parlor table might rouse angry pa.s.sions. She was in the act of putting that work into the bookcase, when her father, observing her suspiciously, asked: