And still there was a buoyancy in her that was always lifting her mountains high after these deep descents into the pit. One potent device for the recovery of self-respect was to name a day from the dawn of which she should start a new life, absolutely different from the past, which was by this act cut off and dropped into oblivion. Monday mornings began not alone a new week, but a new era. Her great fresh start of the year was taken annually at Christmas, or if one made a slip—one always did—the New Year was the time, or else Easter, or, after all, one's birthday was a fitting moment for such regeneration. The girl who had been only eleven was inevitably a poor creature, but the person of twelve! Ah, when the clock struck that complete and significant number a new and quite perfect existence was inaugurated! The next year, to be about to enter one's teens, was discovered to be, after all, the psychological moment for starting a new life. Then fourteen! Ah, that was the true age of understanding, besides being twice the sacred number seven! If she was much happier than other people for the most part—as she knew she was—she had also moments of being much nearer despair. There were all the times when people hurt her feelings, and when her only consolation was the old one of pretending she hadn't any feelings to hurt. If life ministered to her more than it did to most, it bruised her too from crown to sole.
There were those hours of reaction, after long expectation of some birthday-party, or the Fourth of July fireworks, or the school Commencement, when a blank wretchedness fell upon her. It hadn't been what she had hoped. How or where it had failed was partly a mystery, but there was a strange bitterness left behind. She refused vehemently in her own mind to accept for truth the rumor abroad in the world, "Nothing ever comes up to expectation." Oh yes, things would by-and-by come up to and exceed anticipation. It was only now, and through some fault in her, that they fell short of perfection. As she grew older she developed a pitiless self-criticism—of her speech, her manners, her looks, her attainments. This creature, among certain girls that were awkward, and certain others that put on airs and graces, this profoundly egotistical little person, was actually commended for being "perfectly un-selfconscious"; the fact being that she was far too "aware" of herself, saw herself far too vividly in her mind's eye, to go on making the current mistakes of affectation or of clumsiness. She knew unerringly when she giggled with embarrassment, when she had been "making eyes," when she was in danger of seeming superior, or what her grandmother called "toploftical." She was keenly, quiveringly self-conscious, and conscious too of other people; feeling their moods as an Æolian harp feels the light wind, brightening under their unspoken, their merely looked approval, and shrinking beneath her careless exterior at their unuttered blame, wearing her reputation for hardness like an inversion of the magic suit of mail, seeming stout armor, and yet letting every arrow through. Still, it served its purpose, since no one dared say, "See! that struck home!"
CHAPTER XIII
After several years' supremacy as "the greatest dancer on the earth," that brilliant career was suddenly abandoned. It was evident that a mistake had been made. Val's true destiny was to be Queen of Song. It was difficult to illustrate the fact in your unmusical grandmother's house, but you could do a good deal in that direction at the New Plymouth Seminary for Young Ladies. You could roar down several hundred girls in the morning hymn, and you could even have occasional surreptitious performances in the gymnasium, or at home in the kitchen, where whole cycles of impromptu operas were given in a season. For the rest, you sang to yourself in lonely places and exulted. Sometimes you trembled, shaken to the verge of tears by the beauty and pathos of your own voice.
There had been a brief interval when the sum of achievements in the drawing-class seemed, in Val's mind, to point to her becoming a second Rosa Bonheur. It was certain that her copy of Landseer's "Rabbits" was a work of extreme merit. Even her grandmother, who usually said "Hum!" when she looked at Val's original designs for wall-paper or carpet, remarked on beholding the rabbits: "I'll have them framed."
If that were not distinction, where shall it be found?
But it was grasping to set more than one snare for greatness—let Emmie be Rosa Bonheur, Val would be the great singer of her time.
"Let me have music lessons," she prayed. "I'll practise at school and at Julia's."