"'And, like a dying lady, lean and pale,Who totters forth, wrapt in a gauzy veil,Out of her chamber, led by the insaneAnd feeble wanderings of her fading brain,The moon arose up in the murky eastA white and shapeless mass.'"
"'And, like a dying lady, lean and pale,Who totters forth, wrapt in a gauzy veil,Out of her chamber, led by the insaneAnd feeble wanderings of her fading brain,The moon arose up in the murky eastA white and shapeless mass.'"
"'And, like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapt in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky east
A white and shapeless mass.'"
"Is that what you've been writing, Aunt Valeria?"
"No." She came back and sat down on the side of his bed. "No; Shelley wrote it. What shall I do for you?" she said, wondering how women that were used to children would meet the exigency, for the little voice was plaintive in spite of itself.
"I don't want anything," Ethan said, stoutly, and there was another pause. Then, by way of a delicate hint: "Grandmamma has been telling me a story."
"Has she?"
"Yes; about when she was young. Tell me about whenyouwere young, Aunt Valeria."
The innocent petition jarred. Valeria was the youngest of her family, and had never yet been asked to think of herself as one who had left youth behind.
"There's nothing to tell about me," she said.
"Didn't you ever cross the Alleghanies in a stage-coach?"
"No; all that was before my time."
"Didn't you ever go to visit your grandfather Calvert in the mountains of Virginia?"
"No; he died before I was born."
"Then, you never got homesick?" His voice wavered a little, and then, quite firmly, he added: "Grandmamma did, and she used to go off by herself to meet the postman, who came only once a week, and she'd walk and walk till she heard him wind his horn. How do you 'spose he wound it?"
"He just blew a long blast."
"Did that make it wind? Well, anyhow, when he wound it, that used to make grandmamma homesicker than ever. It used to echo all about among her grandfather's mountains, and when she heard that she used to stop running, and sit down on a rock and cry and cry. You see, she was so afraid the postman wasn't bringing the letter to say Aunt Cadwallader was coming to take her home."
"Did my mother tell you that story to-night?" inquired Aunt Valeria, without enthusiasm.
"No; it was this morning, when I said I wasn't a bit homesick like Aunt Hannah said I'd be. Grandmamma seemed to think it didn't matter if Iwashomesick. The Ganos nearly always are, but in the end they're always glad they came."
This obscure saying seemed not to rivet Aunt Valeria's attention; she moved as if she were going. Ethan sat up in bed and asked, a little feverishly:
"Did you know about Aunt Cadwallader bein' in the war?"
"No; I never heard she was in the war."
"Well, shewas. She was about four years old, and the British were firing on Fort McHenry, and all the doors and windows in Baltimore were shut, and nobody went out, and everybody was living in the cellar, so's not to get shot, and bombs were exploding in the garden, and the fambly missed Aunt Cadwallader—"
"Oh yes," said Aunt Valeria; "she was out in the garden, wasn't she, picking up the bullets?"
"Yes; they were raining all about, and she was putting them in a little egg-basket she carried on her arm." Ethan finished, a shade crestfallen to find his scheme to entertain and, above all, to detain his aunt had been forestalled. "I thought perhaps if I told you you'd remember something that happened toyou—when you were young, you know."
"I'm sorry I don't know any stories."
"Don't you know the one about the poor man over your fireplace?"
"What poor man?" she repeated, bewildered.
"The man without his clo'es on, tied to the wild horse."
"Oh, you mean the Mazeppa on the iron fire frame."
"Yes"—Ethan sat up again, with dilated eyes—"wolfs comin' after him, wif mouths wide open."
"Oh, well, they don't eat him up; he gets away, and lives happy ever after."
"Iamglad!"
He lay down, and she covered him up.
"I'd sing to you, but I'm afraid it would disturb my mother."
"Then, couldn't you say some more poetry or something?"
"I don't believe I know anything you'd like."
"Oh, I'd like anything—except the 'May Queen.'"
She sat silent a moment, and then began:
"'Once upon a midnight dreary—'
"'Once upon a midnight dreary—'
"'Once upon a midnight dreary—'
"H'm!"—and she stopped.
"Can't you remember any more?" inquired the boy, eagerly.
"Well—a—perhaps something else;" and she made a fresh start:
"'Ah, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,Alone and palely loitering?The sedge is withered from the lake,And no birds sing."'Ah, what can—'
"'Ah, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,Alone and palely loitering?The sedge is withered from the lake,And no birds sing.
"'Ah, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
"'Ah, what can—'
"'Ah, what can—'
No, no; I must think of something a little less—"
Another pause, and then:
"'Raise the light, my page, that I may see her:Thou hast come at last, then, haughty queen.'"
"'Raise the light, my page, that I may see her:Thou hast come at last, then, haughty queen.'"
"'Raise the light, my page, that I may see her:
Thou hast come at last, then, haughty queen.'"
On and on the low voice chanted, whispered, verse after verse and page on page, until the child slept sound. In this wise was the habit formed of Aunt Valeria'sprolonging her nightly ministrations till Ethan was safe beyond the touch of homesickness, beyond the need of a doubtful cheer. From most of her selections, it must be confessed, he derived only the vague comfort of listening to the rhythmic rise and fall of a friendly, sleep-wooing voice, that sent him softly to oblivion. But as the days went on he developed tyrannous preferences, and would call for "The Neckan" as regularly as he had been used in infancy to demand "The New England Cat." He managed to keep awake longer as time went on, and it took "The Ancient Mariner," or the solemn and somnolent-burdened rhyme of the "Duchess May" to send him to the land of Nod. He came to know these favorites by heart, and would prompt Valeria if she ventured to skip or hesitated at a line. In after years he used to feel it odd to realize how much English verse he knew by heart that he had never seen upon the printed page. But Aunt Valeria's patience was sometimes sorely taxed by his wide-eyed attention to the story. Then it was she would unkindly lapse into German, against which no young wakefulness is proof.
"Now go to sleep," she would admonish, "or I'll say 'Kennst du das Land.'" Notwithstanding it was a very dull poem, she would say it over and over, and Ethan, vanquished utterly, would fall asleep with the refrain, "Dahin, Dahin, Möcht ich mit Dir O mein Geliebter ziehn," sounding in his ears. He had his own view of what it was all about, and classed it with such ditties as "Annabel Lee." "Dahin" he was satisfied was the heroine, and he determined on his return to Boston to bestow the name upon the least attractive of three terrier puppies, fresh arrivals in his absence.
There was no one to play with, apparently, here in New Plymouth, but few children could have felt the lack so little as Ethan. Nobody interfered with him, nobody seemed to want him to study. The spectre of Grandfather Tallmadge was still potent enough to make him carry about a French grammar in the shallow jacket-pocket, that was always ejecting it upon an indifferent world. Ethan, on itseverymal à proposappearance, would hurry the book out of sight with an uneasy conscience, and betake himself into the wilderness, where he owned an oasis under a barberry-bush; or he would seek diversion from linguistic cares in the sooty attic. Nobody seemed to mind, if only he were washed when he appeared on the surface again. That same attic, however, was a place of peril. You gained access to it by means of a ladder in a closet on the upper landing, and you went up through a trap-door into a dim and stifling atmosphere; not but what there were windows, but they seemed to admit only heat and soot. There was an army of disabled or disused pots, pitchers, vases, and so on, standing in the middle of the rough wooden floor, and above them stretched a long table like a counter, on which were ranged queer lamps and candlesticks, brackets, door-knobs, pewter vessels and great platters, candlesnuffers and trays, and all manner of household goods and gear that had then been long out of fashion, and had not yet come back again. With grimy fingers Ethan poked about, taking great care not to step off the middle aisle of flooring on to the lath and plaster between the mighty hand-hewn beams. Sometimes, in more daring moods, he would venture farther afield, balancing cautiously on a beam to some remote cobwebby corner to examine nearer an object that had lured him long with its air of the unattainable. In this way he made acquaintance with certain pictures turned disobligingly to the wall, and a great horse-hair trunk, into which he peeped with palpitating heart; for all the world knew that such trunks were the abode of skeleton ladies. But here were only dusty papers. The far corner he never ventured into: it was there the great elk antlers shone, and the skull and white teeth grinned and threatened. One had just to pretend it was chained there, and strained impotently to get at little boys. Turning over a lot of ancient rubbish in a box one day, he came across a heavy old brass door-knocker with "E. Gano" on it. Down-stairs he rushed, all black and beaming.
Mrs. Gano was sitting, as usual, very upright in thegreat red chair, with Dean Stanley'sHistory of the Eastern Churchopen on her knees.
"My child, you're like a blackamoor!"
"But just look what I've found!"
"Ah, yes! I had that taken off the front-door the last thing before I left Maryland."
"Why didn't you put it on the front-doorhere?"
"You see, it's 'E. Gano.' There was no 'E. Gano' then," she said, with shadowed face.
"But there is now—I'm here."
"To be sure," she answered, smiling. "As your grandfather said, 'It's necessary to have an Ethan in every generation to avoid re-marking things.' We'll have the knocker put up, if you like. Venie will polish it."
"Shall I ask her please to come to you as soon as she's done her work?" he said, hesitatingly, for an interview with these black women was not yet lightly to be faced.
"Tell her I want her at once," said his grandmother, a little brusquely.
He was struck with her peremptoriness.
"Sha'n't I say 'please'?" he inquired.
"Certainly not. It's not as my servants please, but as I please. Tell her to come."
Ethan knew now that his manner to Aunt Jerusha and her daughter must have appeared abject according to Gano standards. He secretly determined to adopt a loftier demeanor. Vain ambition! Never once in his life did he find the accent, let alone the conviction, of the superior, except with persons of his own station. Of servants he asked service unwillingly, and, to the end of his days, with an uneasy sense that somebody was being abased—he inclined to think it was himself. The wages question never in his estimation touched the heart of the obligation. Any underlining of the relation of master and servant was as irksome to him as if he had come of generations of communists, instead of a race of tyrannous slave-holders.
Venie brightened up the knocker till it shone like gold, and Aunt Jerusha, who could do anything on earth,apparently, promised to come round and screw it firmly in its place at exactly the angle it had taken on the great white door "down South."
It was over this business of the knocker that Ethan made friends with Aunt Jerusha. He was still mortally afraid of her, but he had come to that point where he was able to snatch a fearful joy in passing quite near her without flinching, as though she had been any ordinary white person, whose eyes didn't roll, and whose plaited wool didn't escape in little horns from under a flaming bandanna. He had insisted on carrying the tool-box and the hammer and the big screw-driver from the kitchen round to the front porch. It was so that his intention to be lofty and aloof had ended. At the front-door stood his grandmother.
"You've got a lazy man's load," she said.
And, as if on purpose to justify her, down dropped the screw-driver on the gravel, and out jumped the French grammar on the grass. He recovered the book, and as he reached after the screw-driver away slid the hammer off the tool-box.
"Put down your book. Don't try to do so many things at once. That's how your great-uncle Rezin put out his eyes at Harper's Ferry, and Shelley lost his life trying to read and sail a boat at the same time."
Who was this Shelley who was always being quoted, and where did he come into the family saga? Byron, too, and others he hadn't heard mentioned in Boston. The appearance of Aunt Jerusha see-sawing round the corner was a welcome diversion, and soon the glittering knocker was screwed firmly into place. It was a triumph. Aunt Valeria was called down to see, and admitted it was resplendent!
"Isn't itdelicioushaving our very own Maryland knocker on the door again!" remarked the young gentleman, with as heartfelt satisfaction as though he had watched the decline and fall of the old house in the South, and now saw the family fortunes to be mending.
His grandmother patted his shoulder.
"We say 'delicious' of good things to eat, not of door-knockers, even when they come from Maryland."
"Oh, you wouldn't limit such a word as delicious to things we eat," remonstrated Aunt Valeria. "That's a point where I've always differed from Byron."
"Then I'm surprised to hear it, for it's one of the few things he got right."
The younger woman withdrew into her shell, making no rejoinder, but pausing at the bottom of the stairs on her way back to her work, with an air of perfunctory deference, to hear her mother out. Ethan watched the two with interest, feeling that he and his aunt were in the same boat.
"We can't be too jealous of guarding the purity and honesty of language," Mrs. Gano said, firmly. "Any one who has the smallest pretence to caring for letters or for accuracy, or fortruth, must do what he can to oppose the debasing of the current coin of speech. If you use words loosely, you'll begin to think loosely, and in the end you'll find you've lost your sense of values, and one word means no more than another. You'll be like Ethan here, who tells me 'bonny clabber' is perfectly splendid, and that he 'loves' Jerusha's Johnny-cake. After that, he mustn't say he loves you and me. It would be like kissing us after the cat."
"It's akitten," said Ethan, feeling froward and very bold.
His grandmother laughed delightedly.
"Oh, very well, we'll be accurate, if it's only about a kitten that I haven't so much as seen."
The child flashed out to the veranda and returned with a small basket, in which lay a diminutive coal-black object.
"You said you didn't like animals," he observed, reproachfully.
"I don't—not in the house."
"This one's very little to stay out o' doors."
"Yes, it's too little to stay here at all."
"Oh no, it isn't so little as that."
He pulled out its tail that it might look as long aspossible, but it would curl under. He lifted the creature up, clawing and feebly wailing.
"Why, Ethan," said Aunt Valeria over the banisters, "it hasn't got its eyes open."
"Not justyet."
"Can it walk?"
"Well, not much," said Ethan, guardedly; "but nobody walks as young as this. The Otways' cat brought it over in her mouth. They're nice to the Otways' catin the kitchen."
There was judgment delivered in the phrase.
"Venus must take the thing home," said Mrs. Gano, eying the wailing one with coldness.
"Oh, grandmamma!"
There bade fair to be a duet of lamentation.
"It will die if it's left here."
"No, no; I'll take care of it." He clasped it fondly.
"We don't know what to do for such a young creature."
"Oh yes, we do," interrupted Ethan. He came nearer, notwithstanding Mrs. Gano's edging away from her grimy descendant, and from the small, wailing, trembling, clawing object on his breast. The child took hold of her gown, and said, with ingratiating, upturned, face, "Dear grandmamma,couldn'twe buy it a cow?"
The suggestion apparently pleased his unaccountable grandmother too well for her to persist in banishing the kitten. So "Duchess May," as Ethan insisted on calling her, became an acknowledged member of the sooty circle in the kitchen, and was well and safely brought up without the immediate superintendence of a cow.
Mrs. Gano's refusal to admit the Duchess to other parts of the house resulted in Ethan's spending a good deal of his time, too, in Aunt Jerusha's society. She turned out to be a most interesting and accomplished person. No wonder his father had thought well of her, but as to—no, he never, never could have kissed her!
Aunt Jerusha sang the most wonderful songs.
The words were not very intelligible for the most part,but that didn't matter: the effect was all the more exciting and mysterious. There was one monotonous chant she used solemnly to give forth when she was polishing the dining-room table—something about
"... de body ob de Lawd.An' dat was wot He meantW'en He said He'd brought a sword,An' no mo' peace on de earf!"
"... de body ob de Lawd.An' dat was wot He meantW'en He said He'd brought a sword,An' no mo' peace on de earf!"
"... de body ob de Lawd.
An' dat was wot He meant
W'en He said He'd brought a sword,
An' no mo' peace on de earf!"
Then a string of undistinguishable words, ending with something like—
"Oh, mighty keerfulAll roun' de body ob de Lawd,We done been a wrappin'A w'ite linen napkinAll round de body ob de Lawd.He said He'd bring a sword,An' no mo' peace on de earf!"
"Oh, mighty keerfulAll roun' de body ob de Lawd,We done been a wrappin'A w'ite linen napkinAll round de body ob de Lawd.He said He'd bring a sword,An' no mo' peace on de earf!"
"Oh, mighty keerful
All roun' de body ob de Lawd,
We done been a wrappin'
A w'ite linen napkin
All round de body ob de Lawd.
He said He'd bring a sword,
An' no mo' peace on de earf!"
There was a wild melancholy in the air that made the child's heart tremble in his breast. Particularly on wet days, when he couldn't go down into the wilderness, he used to stand in the doorway with the Duchess in his arms, listening with all his ears.
"An' Jerusha," he said, one morning during a thunderstorm, when she polished the oak in persistent silence, "why don't you sing? Grandmamma can't hear."
"No, Massa Efan, not to-day."
"Why not? This is just the day to, when the rain's makin' such a noise you can sing as loud as you like."
"Yo' won't nebber ketch dis nigger raisin' no chunes on de twenty-firs' ob July."
"Why not?"
"Don' you know, little massa, dis de day yo' fader died?"
"Oh-h, is it?" A silence of some moments, broken only by the dash of summer rain against the window-pane. "Did you know my father when he was quite little?"
"Law, yes, littler'n you—so little, he couldn't walk byhisself. De firs' time I done lef' him, jes' fur a minute, standin' in de big arm-cheer by de winder, he turn roun' w'en he see I wusn't holdin' on t' him, an' he yelled like forty—" She chuckled proudly, stopped suddenly, and held out timid arms and made a baby face. "'Ow! ow! Efan fall—Efanbake!'" She relaxed into smiles again. "Break he meant, yo' see. He'd seen pitchers and china dolls and sich like fallin' and smashin' ter bits, and he wus 'feared dat's wot would happen t' him."
She went on chuckling a moment, and then fell unaccountably to weeping. The thunder crashed and the wind blew loud. It lashed the great tulip-tree with fury. Ethan laid his face against the velvet back of the Duchess. Aunt Jerusha wept audibly. Ethan felt rather low in his mind himself.
"Where does this door out here lead to?" he said, feeling the need of a diversion.
"Unner dem front stehs."
"Oh, does it go under the stairs?"
"Yes; but don' yo' go dah, honey."
"Why not?"
"It ain't a berry cheerin' kin' ob a place."
"Dirty?"
"Spec's so."
"I've noticed Venie alwaysrunspast that door. It can't be 'cause it's dirty."
"No, honey; no."
"An' Jerusha, Venie told me yesterday when grandmamma first came here she couldn't get any servants to sleep in this house, and that was why she had to send for Venie."
"Don' yo' min' Venus; she's misleadin'."
"Well, but I asked Mr. Hall while he was cutting the grass, and he saidhewouldn't like to live here, and he looked at the house in such a funny kind o' way."
"Huh! yo' mus'n't listen to po' w'ite trash."
"Then you'd better tell me, or I'll ask everybody."
"No, no, honey. Yo' grandma would be hoppin' mad ef yo' should git dem iggorant pussens t' gabbin' agin."
"Then you'd just better tell me, and it'll be a secret, please, An' Jerusha."
"Well, deydosay, Massa Efan, dis yer house am hanted."
"Hanted? What's that?"
Aunt Jerusha rolled her eyes cautiously over her shoulder and lowered her voice.
"Got ghos'es."
"Under the front stairs?" whispered Ethan, quickly withdrawing from that proximity.
Aunt Jerusha nodded.
"Did you ever see one?"
"Law, yes; oncet or twicet."
"What was it like?"
"Like de debbil in a night-gown. Hark! Yo' heah dat?"
"Yes; oh, what was it?" Ethan was nearer Aunt Jerusha in his alarm than he had ever ventured before.
"Dat's de bad ghos' under de stehs. De fust fall we come heah he done groan andgro-o-anlike dat all de time. He been mighty still now fur a spell. Hark! yo' heah dat?"
Ethan was horribly conscious of a hideous noise somewhere in front of the dining-room.
"Ithink he's in the parlor," he whispered, when he could command his emotions sufficiently for speech.
"No, no; I used t' 'spect he was dah, but dat's jus' his being so cute, he didn' want nobody to know he was unner de front stehs. Come into de kitchen, Massa Efan, and I'll gib yo' a cinnamon roll."
It is useless to pretend that Ethan was a stout-hearted young gentleman. From infancy he had been a prey to a thousand unseen terrors having for the most part quite respectable Christian name and origin, such as the "worm that dieth not," "the thief in the night," the "great red dragon" of the Revelation, and "the beast with seven heads." But there are some terrors that need no inculcating. It occurred to him now that the ghost under the stairswas called Yaffti. Why "Yaffti" he could not have told, or what suggested the name to him; but Yaffti was angry when people, especially little boys, walked over his head without saying:
"Yaffti Makafti, here I am, you see;I'll be good to you, if you'll be good to me."
"Yaffti Makafti, here I am, you see;I'll be good to you, if you'll be good to me."
"Yaffti Makafti, here I am, you see;
I'll be good to you, if you'll be good to me."
His worst form of nightmare was forgetting to use this formula, and daring in his purblind sleep to stamp on the stairs directly over Yaffti's head. He realized by-and-by that the restless spirit underneath was soothed when the stairs were not used, and his young friend made the descent astride the banisters. This pleased all parties, except Mrs. Gano. Next best, from the Yaffti point of view, was walking on the narrow green border of the stair carpet, instead of in the fawn-colored centre. Little by little Yaffti enlarged his jurisdiction, and ruled the porches with a despotism as secret as it was potent, permitting no child to walk on the cracks between the boards. Yaffti was pleased, too, if in going about the town you steered clear of the cracks between the flag-stones. But all this attempt at a friendly understanding was at bottom a mere daylight truce, and with the coming on of night the hollow mockery stood exposed. Ethan, like many another, went through his childish terrors with a silent endurance that would have earned him the name of hero had he been a man, and had Yaffti boasted another name, though not necessarily a more demonstrable existence.
Nevertheless, these were wonderful and beautiful days, having in them a rapture of freedom from human interference incompatible with life under the same roof with Aunt Hannah and Grandfather Tallmadge, who seemed to have nothing better to do than to look after Ethan and spoil his fun from morning till night.
In spite of Ethan's somewhat heathen faith in the power of Yaffti, and the efficacy of rites and spells, he was a true Gano, in that he early developed a deep concern about Christianity. During the stately strolls after supper with his grandmother, he propounded many a question which so taxed that practised theologian that she was fain to turn the conversation by quoting a question-begging beatitude, or saying loftily the subject was beyond little boys. But if, like Dr. Johnson on the immortality of the soul, she sometimes left the matter in obscurity, she had a Bible quotation ready for every conceivable emergency in life. Her ingenuity in wresting from the stern old Scripture humane and cheerful counsel, fit for the infant mind of a conscience-plagued Gano, discovered how true was her comprehension of his fears, and how much wiser her teaching all unconsciously was than that of the creed she would have died for. Her own spiritual development had never for a moment been arrested. She had travelled farther than she was quite aware, since the days when she had allowed her young children to be tormented by the fears of a fiery hereafter. She soon discovered that the Presbyterian Tallmadges had done their best to plant the Calvinistic evil in the sensitive mind of her grandson, and, without misgiving, she proceeded to root it out.
"I don't see how anybody can feelsurethey're going to be saved," the child said, with deep anxiety, one Sunday evening.
"Such thoughts are a temptation of the Evil One. 'O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?'"
"But how do I know I'm not one of those He meantwhen He said, 'Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?'"
"Because our Saviour distinctly says it ofthatgeneration—centuries ago—of rebellious and unbelieving Jews."
"Oh-h!" He was only half reassured.
She paused on the gravel walk and looked down at him. His little grave face was upturned in the twilight, his great eyes darkened by a world of care, but he looked so very fragile withal, such a tender little baby, that she felt her lips twitching at his anxiety lest he should be the viper of the Lord's denunciation. In another moment her unaccustomed eyes were strangely wet, and she walked on with averted face.
"I can't help wondering often," the child pursued, with evident heaviness of spirit, "how I shall manage to be a profitabubble servant."
"A what?"
"Well, not like theunprofitabubble servant that had to be cast into outer darkness, where there was weeping and gnashing—"
"Nonsense! all that has nothing to do with you! He said, 'Suffer little children to come unto Me.'"
"You think, if I died now, I'd go to heaven?"
"Of course you would.Alllittle children go to heaven."
"All children who aren't too wicked," corrected Ethan, gravely, with misgiving.
"There is no such thing as a wicked child," interrupted his mentor, impatiently; then, catching herself up—"They may be foolish and wayward"—she looked down on him sternly—"and they may have to be severely punished on this earth, but they don't know enough to be wicked, not enough to deserve being shut out of heaven."
"I've heard Grandfather Tallmadge say somebody—I think it was some saint—had seen"—he lowered his voice—"had seen an infant in hell, a span long." He shuddered.
"Nonsense!" retorted Mrs. Gano, angrily. "No saint ever saw anything of the sort—nor no sane creature. It was that John Calvin."
"Oh! and you think perhaps he—"
"He didn't know what he was talking about. He had a black, despairing mind, and is the only human creature who ever had any valid excuse for being a Calvinist."
"Oh!"
"I suppose they've not neglected in Boston to tell you there is such a thing as 'the unpardonable sin'?"
The ironic intonation was lost on Ethan.
"Oh no," he said, with the animation of one who recognizes an old friend; "Grandfather Ta—"
"Now, never forget that the only unpardonable sin is to doubt the mercy of God."
"Then you think that when the end of the world comes—"
"I think," she interrupted, with a lyrical swell in her voice as she remembered the prophet's vision—"Iknow, that 'the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joys upon their head; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.' And now we've had enough of that for to-night," she ended, with an abrupt change of voice and style.
Oddly enough, she was not so likely to close the subject in this summary fashion if the evening talk fell upon Ulysses, or Peter the Great, or General Lee. It was sometimes Aunt Valeria who had to remind them of Ethan's bedtime, if the topic had chanced to be the Civil War, or any one of the legion of family stories of Calverts or Ganos and their doings in the South. There was Ephraim Calvert, who had fought for the King in 1774, and when he died had left his curse and his red coat for "a sign" to his rebellious sons, who had fought for independence. There was that cousin Ethan Gano, who had lost his right hand, and yet was such a famous shot and swordsman with his left that no man dared stand up against him. He had made a fortune in the India trade, by chance, as it were, for he never really cared for anything but sword and pistol practice, and would be always talking of feats of arms,even to parsons and Quakers. "Just as that other boaster, Byron," Mrs. Gano would wind up, "was forever telling how, like Leander, he had swum the Hellespont, and took more credit to himself for being able to snuff out a candle with a pistol-shot at twenty paces than for being able to writeChilde Harold. But that was not only because he was a poet," she would add meditatively over Ethan's head: "it was the direct result of inordinate vanity and a club-foot. Just as Ethan Gano would never have been a crack swordsman if he hadn't been one-armed as well as worldly."
Among the minor advantages of life in New Plymouth was that a boy didn't come in for a scolding here if he went without his cap. In common with many children, Ethan hated head-gear of all kinds, and yet fully expected to be scolded, on strict Boston principles, the first time he was discovered hatless out-of-doors. Valeria, wearing a wide shade-hat, and Mrs. Gano, with a green-lined umbrella, came unexpectedly upon him one hot noon-day as he sat reading bareheaded in the scorching sun on the terrace steps.
"How like his father that child is!" said Mrs. Gano, stopping and looking at him as though she saw, not him at all, but another boy.
"Don't you want your hat?" asked Aunt Valeria.
"No," said Ethan, gathering courage. "I—I like the hot sun."
"Isn't that like Shelley?" said Aunt Valeria in the same way that Mrs. Gano had remarked on the likeness to Ethan's father. "If his curly hair wasn't cropped so close, his little round head would be exactly like—"
"What are you reading?" interrupted his grandmother.
"I'm studying," answered Ethan, self-righteously, and he held up his French grammar.
"Don't you do enough of that in school?" said Mrs. Gano, with what seemed strange lack of appreciation in a grandmother.
"They expect me to do some work in the holidays."
"Oh, they do, do they?"
She turned away indifferently, as if to continue her walk, glancing sharply down in that familiar way of hers at the clover fringing the path.
"Do you think I needn't study?" The child had jumped up and joined them as they walked round the house. "You see, I hate doing it most awfully."
"Not 'awfully.'"
"Yes, really, especiallyêtreandavoir; but grandfather says—"
"I notice you use that word 'awfully' a great deal. Do you know what it means?"
Ethan preserved an embarrassed silence.
"Awful means that which inspires awe. Now, your feeling about French grammar does not inspire awe. French is all very well, but it's a good thing sometimes to consider your English. You couldn't have a better task thanthatin the holidays."
"Shall I carry your coat?" said the child, willing to change the topic, and laying his hand on the thin wrap she had on her arm.
"This," said his grandmother, with the Tallmadge insistence on French still rankling, apparently—"this is not a 'cut,' as you call it; and that person approaching is not walking in the 'rud.' You are losing some of your twang, but thy speech still bewrayeth thee. Perhaps learning to talk like a Gano, since you are one, would be a fitting task for the holidays here. Say 'co-o-at.'" He repeated the word in a shamefaced way. "Now 'road.' Yes, that's right." She drew back suddenly and faced about. "Some one's coming in!" she whispered, hurriedly, as who should say "An enemy is at the gate."
She stalked behind the house with Ethan at her side, while Aunt Valeria went forward and greeted the visitor.
"Why, it's the same gentleman who has been here twice before," Ethan observed, looking back.
"Are yousure?" said Mrs. Gano, stopping short. "Was that Tom Rockinghamagain?"
"I don't know his name," answered Ethan, wondering what awful sin Tom Rockingham could have committed.
"Little, insignificant-looking man?" demanded his grandmother.
"He wasn't very big," admitted the child. "It's the one that walked home from church, as far as the corner, with Aunt Valeria and me last Sunday."
"Upon my word!" she ejaculated. "Has Tom Rockingham begun that?"
"I didn't hear his name."
"A man"—she made a gesture of contempt—"very careless about his linen?"
"I didn't notice."
"—without gloves? Hands rather grimy—"
"Aunt Valeria said he was a great scholar."
"A great fiddlestick! Of course it's Tom Rockingham."
This was evidently a most exciting character, and in any case it was pleasant to have a visitor who didn't merely leave cards and go away, as all the others did.
"Aren't we going in to see him?"
"No, certainly not, unless he stays too long."
She threw back her head in that way of hers. They walked up and down the back veranda in silence, Ethan as well aware as if she had poured forth torrents that his grandmother's ire was growing with every moment. Presently she dropped his hand, and going to the door, she called, in an unmistakable tone:
"Valeria!—Valeria!"
"Yes, mother, in a moment," came from the direction of the parlor.
Mrs. Gano waited for some seconds with sparkling eyes, then:
"Valeria, I have called you!"
Ethan was hot and cold with excitement.
"Run away and play," said his grandmother, her gleaming eyes falling on a sudden upon the child. She turned sharply and went in-doors, leaving Ethan to wonder which she was going to kill—Tom Rockingham or Aunt Valeria.He stood quite still, waiting for developments. At last, unable to bear the combined suspense and solitude any longer, he pulled the Duchess out from the cool shade under the veranda, and sat down with her on the step.
Presently Aunt Valeria came out of the parlor and went up-stairs. He didn't see her face.
With a vague, frightened feeling, he got up with the Duchess in his arms and walked away.
Mr. Rockingham never came again, and the only reference ever made to him was weeks afterwards, when the summer was waning, and he passed by the house one evening without a word, without a pause, taking off his hat to the ladies who sat in the dusk on the front porch.
"Who is that?" Mrs. Gano asked her daughter.
"Mr. Rockingham."
"Humph!" remarked Mrs. Gano.
Aunt Valeria said nothing.
Ethan laid his cheek against her slim, white hand. But she didn't seem to him to know or to care for a little boy's sympathy. It was natural, he thought, that he should care so much more for these relations than they did for him. The holidays were ended—so Grandfather Tallmadge had written—and a French boy, a kind of cousin, had come to live at Ashburton Place and go to school with Ethan. "So now he would have a playmate," Aunt Hannah had added, as a postscript. Ethan didn't want a playmate, and he was horribly shy of a boy who knew French by a superior instinct. But to-morrow he was to go back to Boston. No help for it.
Many letters on this subject had been written; it was all no use. He had to go, and his grandmother's eyes were angry when the subject was mentioned, and his own heart heavy and sore in his breast. Aunt Valeria had never said anything, but she was even kinder to him after the decision, especially at dusk, when one felt dreary. Mrs. Gano would seldom allow even the hall lamp to be lighted in the summer evenings, probably from motives of economy; but this reason was never given for any mandateexcept under great pressure. The ostensible end served by sitting in the dusk and groping one's way up-stairs, or being beholden to the moon for acting as the domestic candle, was that if darkness reigned mosquitoes and miller-moths were not attracted into the house; neither were those great winged things with horns, that one never saw in Boston, which fact would have compensated Ethan for endurance of the dark if anything could. In the moments preceding bedtime, the firefly had been a distinct consolation. That very morning he had hid Aunt Valeria's empty cut-glass camphor-bottle under the syringa-bush, and now was the time to try the experiment of bottling a few fireflies and seeing how they lightened their captivity. He sallied forth into the scented dusk, whistling softly. His plan worked wondrous well. With each new victim his spirits mounted higher, he thinking—poor deluded soul!—that he should never again feel downhearted in the dusk. He had caught and imprisoned over a dozen of these winged lamps, when Aunt Valeria came through the bushes, calling softly:
"Ethan! Ethan!"
"Yes; here I am."
He concealed her camphor-bottle as well as he could under his jacket, but the bottle was big and the jacket was small.
"Bedtime," called the voice.
"Just a few more fire—I mean minutes."
"No; your grandmother says it is past the time."
"Oh, dear! then I s'pose it is." He came out of his covert, and on a sudden impulse added, hurriedly: "Aunt Valeria, do youcareabout your camphor-bottle?"
"Care about it?"
"Yes; do you mind if there's fireflies in it instead of camphor?"
He held it up, and the captives lit their pale lamps and fluttered despairingly.
"Oh, my dear! they'll die."
"No; they like it. It's such a beautiful bottle."
"But you've got the glass stopper in; they can't breathe."
In spite of his entreating, she took out the stopper, and put the end of her lace scarf over the opening.
"You won't take it away from me?"
"No, no," she said, gently leading him back to the front porch, repeating as she went: