However, though Peter was proud enough of his girl’s beauty, he was far more elated over her mental aptitudes. She excelled all others easily; she carried off every prize in her classes; she came home to him one day with the diploma of her accomplishments in her hand. He was too proud to find the words suitable for his satisfaction; for, in a certain sense, it was his own diploma also. He had studied with Adriana constantly. He had heard her lessons, and talked them over with her, until they were as familiar to him as to her. As he walked about his room that night, so happily sleepless, he examined himself in history, geography, science and mathematics; and he gave Peter Van Hoosen the credit he honestly deserved:
“Even I have not done badly,” he said. “I am a great deal more of a man than I was four years ago. Now, Yanna and I are going to have good times. She wants to learn music. Very well, she shall learn it. And we will read and study books that are something above the general run of school books.” He sat down to the thought, let his hand fall upon his knee, and peered into the future with the proud glance 5 of one who knows his strength, and foretells his own victory.
In the morning he had a disappointment. Adriana wanted to go to college. To learn music was not all she desired. There were other things just as important—repose and dignity of manner, a knowledge of dress and address and of the ways and laws of society; and these things could be learned only by personal contact with the initiated. So she said, “Father, I wish to go to college.” And after a short struggle with his own hopes and longings, Peter answered, “Well, then, Yanna, you must go to college.”
She had been there but little more than two years when she received the following letter from her father: “Dear Yanna. I took your mother into New York yesterday. We went to see a famous doctor, and he told her that she must die; not perhaps for weeks, or even months, but sentence of death has been passed.” Peter did not add a word to this information. He would not tell Adriana to come home; he wished her to have the honor of giving herself a command ennobled by so much self-denial. And as he expected, Adriana answered his letter in person. Thenceforward, father and daughter walked with the mother to the outermost shoal of life—yes, till her wide-open eyes, looking into their eyes at the moment of parting, suddenly became soulless; and they knew she was no longer with them.
After a few days Peter said, “Yanna, you must go back to college.” But she shook her head resolutely, and answered, “I am all you have. I will not leave you, father. We can read and study together.”
“That would make me very happy, Yanna. And you can have a good music teacher.”
“I do not want a music teacher, father. I used to think I was an unrecognized Patti; now I know that I have only an ordinary parlor voice. I measured myself at college by a great many girls; and I found out I had been thinking too highly of Adriana Van Hoosen. My friend Rose Filmer—and twenty others beside her—can sing pieces I have not even the notes for. Rose plays much better than I do. She is cleverer with her pencil. She always does everything just properly, and I scarcely ever miss making a blunder. If I were only like Rose Filmer!”
“Come, come! that is a girl out of a book.”
“No; Rose is a girl out of New York. I am a girl out of Woodsome village. There have always been a city and a country mouse, father. And they are both good in their own way. But I could not be Rose Filmer unless I had been rocked in Rose’s cradle.”