The Open Question Part 37

"No; they _have_ to be all alike. That's what parents never realize.

Gran'ma was just so about my gymnasium dress. But Jerry Otway's going to bring a piece of orange-wood back. He traded with another boy at the Military Inst.i.tute, swopped an old racket for it. He's going to see if he can't do a home-made bow, so's you can't tell the difference, varnish and all."

"When does Jerry get back?"

"A week from to-morrow, in time for Julie's birthday-party."

They had gone a mile or so along the old turnpike road. The sun was still very hot and the dust ankle-deep. Mr. Gano stopped meditatively, and struck his blackthorn into the gray "MacAdam" powder.

"Yet, in spite of all this to occupy and amuse you, you want to turn your back on it all."

"I--what?"

"I understand you are thinking of running away."

Val gave a little gasp, and prayed the dusty road might gape and swallow her.

"I--I--"

"Don't be frightened, and don't be sorry that I know," he said, gently.

"I think you ought to have told me before."

She ventured to lift a pair of very anxious eyes.

"I don't blame you. You are an unfortunate child."

"Child? I am in my sixteenth year," she interposed, with dignity.

"You are an unfortunate child," he repeated, firmly, "with a great deal of surplus energy. It must go somewhere. It's a law of nature; only I hadn't quite realized how it was with you. You never seemed at a loss."

"You knew I was just dying for want of proper music-lessons."

She could not keep the excited tears out of her eyes.

"Well, well!" her father muttered, leaning with both hands on his stick and scrutinizing the dust. "I wonder if a few music-lessons couldn't be managed."

"A few? I don't want a _few_: I want months and years! I want to act and sing in grand opera, and--be famous," she said, to herself, but aloud--"make heaps of money."

Her father turned to walk back to the town, saying, calmly:

"Oh, as to acting and singing, _that_ of course--"

She opened her eyes wide. Did he understand? Was he going to relent?

"A young person's wanting to go on the stage and astonish the world with her genius--that's natural enough."

Val began to shrink. She hadn't mentioned genius.

"It's a very usual sentiment, I believe, among young people," he went on, in the same calm voice. "It's a ferment natural to their time of life--not very serious, any more than first love or measles."

Val grew stiffer and more dignified with each word he uttered.

"Anybody would think from what _you_ say, father"--she was holding herself down with difficulty--"that people all gave up music when they arrived at years of discretion. There _is_ such a person as Patti after all, and there may be somebody somewhere _better_ than Patti, just"--her voice began to shake--"just waiting for a little help."

"Ah, better than Patti!"

He smiled. The look of tender amus.e.m.e.nt fell like a lash upon the spirit of his child.

"Oh yes, it's all very well to laugh, father. _You_ don't care. Nothing matters any more to you. I dare say, even when you were young, you didn't know what it was like to feel that you'd be chopped up into little fine pieces rather than go on in the old dull way that most people do."

A quick, dim look, like the ghost of an ancient pain, flitted over the worn face of the man; but he walked on, saying nothing.

"You don't know what it's like to look over there for years and years"--she flung out a hand to the horizon--"and say to yourself, day in and day out, 'Beyond that blue line is the world! Oh, when shall I be seeing the world?'" She stopped, and so did her father, turning now to look at the excited face. "Some people _never_ do," she said, with a kind of incredulous horror. "I can't sleep sometimes for thinking of how, here in New Plymouth, there are all these people, with all their senses (so far as you can see), and arms, and legs, and money, and _yet_ here they sit, just where they happened to be dumped--sit and wait till they die! Oh, it's like a nightmare, thinking of them! I feel if I don't run away quick while I'm awake and able to move, I shall freeze fast in my hole, too, and never be able to reach all the beautiful things that are waiting--out there!" She nodded over to the encircling hills.

"_Think_ of it!" and the bright tears tumbled out of her s.h.i.+ning eyes.

"I don't want my little girl to miss any good thing," he said, presently, as they were nearing the town.

"Then help me, father. Be kind to me."

She came closer, and touched his sleeve.

"But the things waiting for those who venture out there"--he turned a look full of foreboding on the blue horizon--"they aren't all, or even most of them, good things."

"No, no. I've heard that; but I'll make the best of them."

He shook his head.

"You haven't a notion what a hard world it is for women--and for men, my dear. I want to save my little girl from--"

"What does it matter if I _do_ have a hard time? I expect a hard time.

n.o.body could invent a time so hard that I couldn't bear it, and come out of it! Oh, you'll see--"

"Perhaps, when you are older--"

"Older!" Her face flashed quick alarm. "I'm dreadfully old already. I ought to have begun when I was twelve. There's little enough time to learn all I have to. If I don't run away quick--father, I feel it in my bones--something will happen; I shall _never_ go, I shall stick here like the rest, till--till the end."

He glanced sideways at her. She met his eyes with a look he had never seen in them before.

"Val--" he cleared his throat as they neared the Fort.

"Father!" she interrupted quickly. "Don't ask me to say I won't run away. I couldn't keep such a promise."

"That was not what I was going to suggest," he answered, completing a sudden mental readjustment. "I have nothing more to say against your plan, only I think it must be rather dull to run away alone. Suppose we run away together?"

"Together, father?"

"Yes; I--I think I'm on the track of a valuable discovery, and I must follow it up."

"Oh--what?"