"Grandma is not so well to-day," said Emmie's letter the next morning. "I think you oughtn't to be away long. She is surprised to have only a 'safe arrival' telegram from you and no letter. She says she doesn't count the post-card. But she does, and I think you'd better not send her another."
Val read it out at breakfast.
"Well, you just write and tell them I'm giving a Pink Luncheon for you to-morrow, and that there are two more dances next week. You can't possibly go till a week from Saturday."
"But perhaps, if grandma really isn't so well, I oughtn't to stay quite so long."
"My dear girl, she's been 'not so well' since before I was born."
The Pink Luncheon was a huge success. The fame of its pinkness—of Mrs. Ball's "perfectly fascinating" visitor, and that visitor's perfectly adorable cousin, Mr. Gano—were long discussed among Mrs. Ball's "first people." The ungrateful guest alone was not content.
"Miss White has just asked Will Austin," Harry whispered to her as they were leaving the table, "if I'm the man you're going to marry."
His laughing eyes left her in no doubt as to the audacious answer he had given. She glanced across at Ethan. He was lingering a moment with his neighbor, Baby Whittaker, while they ate a philopena, smiling and talking for all the world as if— But, after all, what did it matter? Since the moment when Ethan had said that about his "caring,"she had lived in a cloudy rapture. Nothing but a blessed happiness was clearly defined, not even the wish to define. For a time Ethan's confession was all-sufficient. She had borne with his absence and his engagements with Mr. Otway, as she bore now with his polite pretence that Miss Whittaker really existed. Val endured the inconclusive hours with a patience that would have been more surprising had it been patience at all, and not sheer absorption in the unreasoning joy of living over that moment, which she felt had justified her coming, even if it presaged no easy issue. She had determined to stay at least a week longer. A week was a lifetime; a thousand things could happen in a week.
Dimly in the background of her mind she was feeling her way to a conclusion that, if all else failed, should beyond peradventure break down this nightmare barrier. But she did not even subconsciously face the extremity.
They had all been going to ride out to Miss Baby Whittaker's in the afternoon.
Val was no friend to the plan, but too much had been said of Baby Whittaker's conquest of Ethan the day before at the Pink Luncheon for her to venture an objection. When the discreet Saturday brought with it floods of rain, Val's heart went out in gratitude.
During the little lull in the downpour, about two o'clock, Ethan had ridden over, whereupon the Ball household smiled covertly at his eagerness to go to Baby Whittaker's. But it was no use, the roads were already very bad, and down came the torrent again. It was just as well, perhaps, as Mrs. Ball wouldn't, in any case, be able to go. Old father Ball had had a seizure of some sort in the morning, and Mrs. Ball hung over him solicitously, fearing another.
Val's chief concern was lest, when Ethan saw the dropped jaw and leaden eyes, he should turn and flee. "Whydidthey keep their old and sick in the parlor?" thought the girl, angrily.
Suddenly Mrs. Ball gave a scream. "Harry, help me to take him into his room!"
He was struggling. Ethan went forward, and he and Harry carried the old man out.
"Is he dead?" asked the girl, when Ethan came back.
"No, he's not in luck this time, I'm afraid. I've lent Harry my horse to go for the doctor. Thedoctor!" He gave a little dry laugh.
They stood at the window, looking out.
Surreptitiously she glanced at him.
"Oh, you wouldn't look so grave if you knew what I know," she thought to herself. "Ifeelit's coming all right for us. It must, itmust! But I dare not say so yet;" and with her sense of superior knowledge, of being in the councils of the gods, her spirits rose.
"How can you bear to be in the house with that awful old man?" Ethan was saying.
"Oh, he's not often like this. Isn't it wonderful," she remarked, with recovered cheerfulness, "to think he's nearly ninety?"
"Repulsive. He gave me the horrors the first time I saw him."
"I can't help staring at him. He seems hardly human."
"He's not human. Only the animal survives. To think that we can go on eating and sleeping so long after the heart and the brain have burned themselves out!" He moved away impatiently, saying, half to himself: "How perishable the best things are! How long the lower nature lasts!"
"Twenty-three—ninety"; she did the sum. "Sixty-seven years more, perhaps."
"For you!" He wheeled round and looked at her. "Heaven forbid! Upon my soul, if I thought thatyou, with all you stand there for—of beauty and gladness—if I thought you'd go on living till you were the feminine counterpart of that old horror, I"—he choked with a half-whimsical fury—"I believe I could kill you with my own hands."
She came closer, smiling.
"It would be just like me to go on till I'm a hundred, if I'm not stopped."
"What prompts you to say such things to me?" he said, sharply, and turned again to the window.
"But all the old don't end like Mr. Ball.Ishall be a lively old lady, if I'm not stopped."
"Oh, nothing could stop you."
She laughed.
"Don't be so hopeless. You see, I've studied the subject of old age. The reason it isn't more valued is because it's taken too modestly. I suppose it's difficult not to be modest if you're ninety. But no old person should be unselfish or patient. That's fatal. You see the success our own grandmother has made."
Without turning round, Ethan began to laugh, too.
"A woman must be gentle and amiable (if she can manage it) while she's young. It's becoming in the young," she said, piously; then, with a cheerful gleam, "but all old women should be defiant—yes, they should study a dictatorial style, and make the young ones toe the mark. It's the only way. Oh, I'll be an aged Tartar, and, you'll see, they'll all say, 'A person of remarkable character is old Mrs.—' H'm!"
She stopped short, and he turned round smiling and glowering at her, and then back again to the window.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, looking over his shoulder.
"What? That poor devil over there? Yes, I've been watching him."
"I don't see— Oh, yes, the cripple. Ethan, Ethan, whatisone to do with you!"
She dropped on the sofa with a face of comic despair.
"Do with me?"
"Yes—if every time you look out of the window you see a 'devil' of some sort."
He laughed, and then:
"But you said 'Oh!' and I thought—"
"I said 'Oh!' because the rain's stopped and the sun's trying to shine. And all you can see is a cripple dragginghis leg through the mud! Come along"—she jumped up—"the rain's ruined the roads, but it hasn't hurt the river, and we'll go for a row. It's going to be beautiful."
She dragged him off without ceremony.
As they passed by the Wharton House, "There's Otway," said Ethan, looking up at a group of men at the entrance.
Mr. Otway came down the steps and shook hands.
"This is a surprise!" he said to Val. "Come in and see Julia. She has no idea you're here."
"Oh, thank you, not this evening. We're going on the river, and it gets dark so soon. I didn't know Julia was coming."
"Neither did I," laughed the indulgent father, "until this morning. Well, come in to-morrow. Good-bye!"
They got a boat, and by half-past four were speeding up-stream to Ethan's steady stroke.
"It'll be a simply glorious evening. We shall have a flaming sunset, you'll see!"
"Yes. The rain has washed the world till it shines."
They talked very little at first.
"I don't think we ought to go beyond the Gray Pool," said Val, regretfully.
"Where's that?"
"About a mile on."
"Oh, we can get farther than that."
"Well, they don't know where I am, you see, after all, and it's nice by the Gray Pool, where the trees bend down. You could rest there."
"Do I look as if I wanted to rest?"
"Can't say you do."
"You've never told me what brought you here all of a sudden."
"I wanted to find out something."
"Well, have you succeeded?"
He smiled at her in that sudden way of his that made her heart contract. She couldn't speak directly, but hersilence seemed to her to say too much. She rushed nervously for the light veil of words.
"I was afraid my life was growing poorer than I had imagined. If you were going out of it, I knew I must go and find something to fill up the empty place."
"Going out of it?" He scrutinized her keenly. "Where should I go?"
"Oh, there are so many people and things beckoning to you. How could I tell? I was afraid you'd gone into some world where I couldn't follow—"
"So you came after me?" he smiled tenderly.
"Some world," she said, getting a little red, "where you didn't want me."
"Ialwayswant you—" he stopped short, drew his forward-bending figure up, and pulled hard at the oars. "But as to my world, you'd hate it if you found yourself at close quarters with it. I give you the best side of it in my letters."
"I've told you I don't want only the best."
"What do you want?"
"All."
The brave, yet shamefaced look left nothing doubtful; but he affected to think she spoke only of letters.
"If I wrote you 'all,' I'd make a pessimist of you in no time."
"Would it be things about—about other women that would make me—"
"Chiefly about men; most of all, about the things that are stronger than men."
They were silent a moment.
"I don't know how it is," she drew her hand across her eyes; "but you give me again the old feeling that you're somehow a prisoner—"
"A prisoner—yes."
"And that I must set you free."
His dark eyes were misty for a moment. "You couldn't do that without—"
"Without?"
He shook his head, turned, and glanced behind him. "Oh, look at the sun!"
It was going down in a crimson flood that dyed the whole country-side a red that was like new-spilt blood. It was one of those atmospheric effects under which the most contradictory colors in nature are subdued to a common hue. One has at such times a sense of looking at the landscape through colored glass. The white and yellow farm-houses flamed a dull orange. Their windows glowed like brass reflecting fire. The very trees and grass were soaked in the strong dye of the sun. Ethan's steady pull took them swiftly on, out of sight of farms, into the wilder country. Still the girl sat with uplifted face. Her love of autumn and of sunsetting had been no sad reflective sentiment, but something more than common—eager, subtly exhilarated, joyous. To-day, stimulated and at the same time balked, she found in the splendor of the hour a sharper sense than ever of the drama in life, the essential poetry in human experience.
"I think I must be growing old," she said, with a happy sigh.
"What are the signs?"
"I'm beginning to notice the scenery. I'm grateful to the sun."
Her eyes fell suddenly on the clean-carved features opposite; the dark head and the pale ivory of the face seemed alone of all things in the responsive world to refuse to wear the livery of light.
"Oh, I forgot," she said, "you don't like sunsets any more than you like autumn. Here's the mooring-place."
He stopped his long, steady stroke, and paddled the boat under the overhanging trees.
"On the contrary," he said, making fast, and looking the while through the branches to the conflagration in the west—"on the contrary, I've changed, too—'growing old,' perhaps, like you." He smiled and sat down, his eyes on the slow-sinking sun. "These, and scenes like them, are the conditions that reconcile me."
"Reconcile! They lift me up so high that I am dizzy."
She closed her eyes an instant, and then opened them with a fluttering smile. They seemed to have forgotten there had been any thought of going ashore.
"It is so splendid and yet so calm," he said, in a low voice. "It sets me free from the burden and heat of the day."
"It doesn't setmefree—not that I want to be set free. I love the burden and heat of the day. But this—thissets me thrilling. It clutches me at the heart, and makes my breath taste sharp, like steel, against my tongue. This is the wonder-time of day."
"Yes," he said, dreamily—"yes, in a sense, it is the wonder-time. No morning or high noon, anywhere up and down the world, can match this hour."
"But it makes you sad," she said, resentfully, as though he had spoken an ill thing of some one dear.
"No, I'm not sad any more; I'm reconciled. It is the moment when I can most easily forget my own existence, and feel melted into the general life."
She turned away with flashing eyes.
"Why are you so angry?" he said, softly, "or is it the sunset dyes you redder than it did?"
"That you can say such things so calmly, and at such a moment—with all this" (she opened her arms as if passionately to embrace the beauty of the world)—"all this spread out before us, with only you and me to see it, the unconscious world not caringthat"—she snapped her quick white fingers in the lazy air. "You sit there saying the eyes that glory in it, the hearts that ache at the wonder of it,theyare nothing; they are here to look on a moment, suffer, and die, while the great spectacle goes on and on and on. Why did we come here, then? What's the good of it?"
"I'llnever tell you."
"I'd begin to believe some of your libels on life if I thought there wasn't more in it than just—"
"Just?"
"That we are brought here with allthisinside us"—shedrew her doubled hand across her breast like one in pain—"all this, and with the destiny of brutes—cheated a little while with gladness while we're children—"
"That'sa superstition, too. The happiness of children is more than half an illusion of the old.Iremember. Others have forgotten; that's the difference."
"No, no; I remember, too!" The raised voice was half challenge, half appeal. "Iwas happy, and I'm happy still, except when you—" She broke off near the brink of tears. "And I mean to be happy. Oh, it's a good,goodworld, and I'm glad I'm here."
"I'mglad you're here."
"But if you were right"—she looked out with a vague fear to the fading west—"if all this keen consciousness existed just to be tortured a little while, and then flung down in the dark—if that is all"—the eager face grew white—"then human life's an outrage."
Silence for a moment, and then in a low voice came the words:
"Itisan outrage."
"Don't say so, Ethan; I can't bear it."
"Oh yes, we can all bear it; and by so much we ephemera get back our lost significance, our sovereignty."
She looked up.
"Through this strange fate of ours," he said, "we fulfil the end of the world."
Old doctrinal associations flitted before the phrase, blurring for her his pagan use of it.
"The end, the aim of the universe, seems to be beauty—beauty so varied in spirit and in form that it often gets strange names from men."
"Yes, it isallbeautiful, isn't it, Ethan?"
"That you can always see it so, and that even I can see it sometimes, proves we are not the lowest in the scale of life. That power of finding Beauty through her disguises is the best seal civilization sets on men."
"And so even you believe we fulfil the end of the world?"
He nodded.
"It's as magnificent, in its way, as a mountain peak, or the going down of the sun, that puny men should accept the outrage of life and the insult of death so nobly, with so little crying out. When one thinks of it"—he laughed harshly—"the old gods and heroes were pygmies compared with modern men. What were their doings and their destinies to the hopeless, silent battle men are waging, without God and without hope in the world? The men of to-day don't go reeling into battle, drunken with the wine of hope, or dazed with the fairy tales of faith. But they fight none the less well, knowing they go out to die, and not even sure for what cause. It is so they fulfil the end of the world. Nothing in it is mightier than the spirit of man calmly confronting his fate."
She drew a quick breath.
"You've put it into words," she said, "but I'vefeltit."
He looked at her with dull foreboding. He had expected contradiction, not acquiescence.
"Come," he said, rising and catching up the boat-cushion. "It's chilly here in the boat. Why did we come under these wet trees? Let's land, and go and sit in what's left of the sunset there."
"You're not calmly confronting your fate," she said, smiling dimly.
"Come." He held out his hand.
She took it and laid her cheek against it.
"I'll come with you," she said, "into the light or into the dark."
"Child, child, what have I done to you?"
He dropped the cushion in the bottom of the boat. She clung to him. He wavered, the boat rocked violently.
"Be careful, it's deep here," she said, and drew him down on the cushion at her feet.
"Val"—he averted his face—"you must try to understand. The barrier between you and me is a real one. It's not a question of whether your father's views were right or wrong, but that our imaginations have been infected by them. I, at least, would always be fearing, expectingdisaster, and the fear would bring the evil to pass. Or even if it didn't, the fear would—would destroy us."
"No, no!"
"It's true. I have no courage equal to facing either my family inheritance, or my own dread of life—in a little child." He threw off her clinging hand. "Thinkof any one feeling as I do about life, thrusting it on another—on some one I would love as I would love your—" He dropped his head and covered his eyes with his hand.
"Why do you think always of some possible other person? Why do you never think ofme?" she cried.
He made a sudden movement, dropping his hand on the gunwale of the boat, and looking straight into her eyes, with something new in the mobile face, something that inundated, drowned her in one hot flush of passion.
"Oh!" she cried, half closing her eyes, "do you care like that?" and she drooped forward into his open arms.
"Like this and like this," he said, kissing her fiercely. "Oh, my love! my love! why have you infected me? Why have you poured yourself into my very blood?" He had taken her by the shoulders almost roughly, arraigning her with sombre-burning eyes. "You put that face of yours in all my dreams. I go to sleep with it on my pillow; I wake up, it still is there. In the blackest night I see you as I saw you first, standing above the darkness, holding a great light in your hand. But the light is not to light my way. Get you back into your fortress as quickly as you can." He pushed her from him. "I am the enemy."
"'Enemy,' 'coward'—I've another name for you," she said, trembling; "and if I have any light, it surely is for you. Dear Ethan, don't you see? Don't you see?"
"See?" The moody eyes were heavy with passion.
"It's all quite clear." She sat before him in the bottom of the boat, with hands clasped, and a veiled exaltation in her eyes. "We must make a compact. We Ganos are honest people; we'll play fair."
"A compact?"
"Yes. It will seem to other people like the commonone. They'll call it marriage. It may be, we'll live a lifetime together without doing the ill you most dread doing. But if—if the worst comes to the worst, we will have had one perfect year."
"What do you mean, Val?" He seized her wrists.
"It's more than every man and woman gets," she cried.
"And then?"
"Then, according to the compact, we will go out together before—before we've opened the door—to another." With a broken cry she flung herself on his breast.
"Hush, hush, child! this is all—" His eyes were full of tears.
"You'll see it is the only way. No one but ourselves will pay for our being glad a little while."
"Glad! Do you think you could be glad, poor child, with such an end forever before your eyes?"
"Hasn't all the world that end in view? Aren't many of us glad in spite of all?" She smiled up into his face. "But can't you see that I'd rather be sad with you, than be glad with any other?"
He kissed her, and then: "This is nothing but madness—and my work, too," he added, bitterly—"mywork."
She put her fingers on his lips.
"You take too much credit. It wasn't you who said, 'All mankind is under a sentence of capital punishment.' It isn't as if we could escape, you know."
The old sense of all the ways being barred, of being a creature trapped, lay heavy on him.
"Oh, my dear, my dear!" he said, with a weary laugh, "we ought to be less rational, or more so. You think you love me, little girl?"
He laid his hands about her throat, and as he looked into the face his senses swam again. She neither spoke nor moved, but the quick, bright scarlet was in her cheek, and all her womanhood was in her eyes.
"This leaping of the importunate blood," he thought, "all this heartache, because of the will to live of thatcreature who is never to be born; the spirit of the race, heedless of 'compacts,' clamoring for reincarnation."
"If life's as terrible and strange as you say," Val whispered, drawing a little away, "and if this life'sall, why, it's as clear as daylight, we'd be less than rational, we'd be stark mad, to let our little day of happiness go by. You see"—she crept closer to him again in the failing light, half crying—"it concerns only us. We'll live our perfect day, and when the evening comes we'll lie down—"
"In each other's arms," he said, hiding his face in her loosened hair, his tortured mind turning with passion to the image of ultimate peace.
"Yes." Sobbing faintly, she drew away that she might see his face. His voice had sounded strangely. "This is our compact," she said, and she kissed him on the lips.
"Our betrothal," he answered, dreamily, as one who has set his lips to a philter.
"Betrothal? Yes. I didn't know what a strange sound the word had. We must exchange rings. Oh, Fate, be kind to us!" She lifted up her face as she drew off the ring she wore. "You needn't be afraid to be kind. We are honest people. We'll keep faith. Ethan," she whispered, "theycan'tgrudge us so little as we ask."
"The powers that be?"
She nodded.
"You said yourself that what we ask is more than many men and women find. A year with you"—he gathered her up to his breast—"a whole year of beautiful life and beautiful love without fear of the long decline! It's a dream to draw the very gods out of their heaven. Oh, be sure they'll be jealous of you and me."
He kissed her again and again.
"We mustn't let them be jealous. Where's your ring?"
He drew off his signet, and took from her the little old band set with pearls and two small rubies.
"Too little for me," he said, "and too—"
He smiled at the obvious femininity of the old trinket.
"It's not for you to keep. We must make a sacrifice.I'll give yours to the Spirit of the Air." She threw the signet as far up into the twilight as she could, and they both listened. "Yours is accepted," she said, triumphantly. "You must give mine to the Water."
"Aren't you afraid the Earth will be jealous?"
He held the ring over the side of the boat.
"Oh, no; the Earth is patient; she knows we'll give her more than a ring. Why do you wait? The Water-spirit will be angry."
"You never told me who gave you this."
"It was my grandmother's engagement ring."
"No; was it? If this ring hadn't been given, neither you nor I would be in the world."
He dropped it into the river. They sat quite still, each knowing perfectly what new train had been started in the other's mind, and neither wanting to unpack the heart with words. A couple of boats came up the river, full of boys and girls, laughing and singing. When they got nearly opposite the pool their voices rang out plainly, complaining of the current, and suggesting turning back.
"What a pity you asked me that about the ring!" Val whispered.
"I'm not sure it was a pity, dear."
The passion had gone out of his voice.
"Youlikeher standing here between us?"
"I don't like to forget what must be remembered."
If Ethan were conscious that the mental apparition of the old woman with her silent, but effectual, "I forbid the banns"—if he were quite conscious that her coming brought behind the dash of disillusionment a sense, too, of reprieve, he forbore to say as much. It was enough that the first wearer of the sunken ring had made not only the difference to those two of being summoned out of the infinite, but the difference of holding them back from the infinite as well. The compact they had made was null and void as long as their common ancestress lived. Her character and influence built high an impregnable barrier between her descendants and this thing she would despise, and whichthey knew would give her her first taste of the cup of humiliation.
"It cannot be while she is in the world," said Ethan.
With unconscious cruelty the other answered:
"But she is very, very old, and we are young."
A sudden stifled cry rose apparently out of the bushes and tall water-weeds just to their left. Ethan sprang up.
"It's only those boys," said Val, as a chorus of confused exclamations came from beyond the Gray Pool.
"No, it was nearer. Didn't you hear a splash?"
The screams grew more distinct.
"One of 'em's in the water," he said. "Hallo, there!"
He paddled out from the overshadowing tree.
"Ethan!" Val held out her hands in a sudden agony of fear. "It's horribly deep here, and there's a current! It's the most dangerous place on the river!"
"Yes. Bad place for a little chap. Where did he go down?" he shouted.
"It was a lady. Her boat's just behind you."
Ethan turned, and saw dimly, a few yards off, Mr. Otway grasping the side of a row-boat, and looking over into the water in a pitiable paralysis of horror.
"Where? where?" Ethan called, scanning the river on all sides.
Something vague rose up a few yards below the boats, and moved quickly down the current. Ethan was overboard in an instant, striking out in the direction of the dark object.
Val caught up the oars and followed in the boat. It was all over in a few minutes. Ethan had laid hold on the unconscious girl, and swam with her to the bank. Val rowed across, and Ethan and she, between them, dragged Julia into the boat. The boys, who had followed, called back to Mr. Otway that the lady was saved.
When the father got up with them, Julia was reviving.
"You'd better get into their boat," said Ethan to Val; "the old man's not fit to go alone down-stream, you know. You won't mind?"
"No," said Val; "but let us keep close together."
"Of course."
"Shewouldcome," Mr. Otway kept saying, helplessly. "Itoldher my river days were over. Shewouldcome."
"How did the accident happen?" said Val, keeping eyes and ears intent upon the boat just in front.
Ethan bent to the oar, looking back now and then to see that Val was close. Julia lay motionless, with Ethan's coat over her.
"We must go as fast as we can," he called out. "We'll be able to get some brandy at Leigh's Landing, and a trap."
"How did it happen?" Val repeated.
"Oh, we started only five minutes after you did, and Julia rows so well we could have caught up with you. But she changed her mind or else got tired, and when you got out of sight"—he put on hispince-nezand looked anxiously after the boat in front—"when you got out of sight, she wanted to rest."
"Where was that?"
"Near the Gray Pool. She pulled the boat in among the rushes. I was tired, too. I think I fell asleep. First thing I knew we were out of the rushes, and Julia was leaning out of the far end of the boat."—("I wonder how much she heard?" was the thought that haunted Val.)—"Whether it was my speaking suddenly startled her, or whether she lost her balance, I don't know—I don't know at all." And he droned on about, "Shewouldcome. Isaidmy river days were over."
They found, as Ethan prophesied, dry clothes and warming potions at Leigh's Landing, and a farm wagon to take them back to town.
The two men sat talking volubly in front, Ethan driving. The two girls occupied the back seat, in a silence never once broken till they said "Good-night" at the Wharton House.
"Well, Val, where have you been?"
"I've been boating, and—"
"Boating, after all! And poor Harry so anxious, riding along those awful roads to the Forest Park Lodge."
"Why should he do that? He might have known—"
"He knew there was a very urgent telegram for you here." Mrs. Ball was deeply reproachful. "We thought it best to open it."
Val snatched it up and read:
"Come home at once.—Sarah C. Gano."
"Come home at once.—Sarah C. Gano."
"Oh, she's ill; dying, perhaps! Oh, God! not dying!" She leaned against the wall; her face frightened her hostess.
"My dear, it doesn't say a word about being ill."
"It's what it means; she knew I'd understand."
"Don't take it like that, Val." She put her arm round the girl.
Val threw her off, exclaiming: "Oh, I must go this moment. Can we send Ethan word? Quick, quick!"
"I'll let him know soon enough," returned the other, fastening suspicious eyes on the girl's pitiful face. "I expect Harry back every moment. I'll help you with your packing."
In a dim way Val was relieved on second thoughts that Ethan should not be summoned. He and she had been plotting treason. The poignant fear and grief that swayed her would wear an artificial air in his presence after what had passed.
The packing, Harry's return, the hurried supper, all wentas in a nightmare. Now she was driving to the station, now she was saying good-bye to Mr. and Mrs. Ball, and to Harry. No, he was coming with her apparently. Now they were in the train. Now they were rattling and clattering through a tunnel. She sat in a corner with closed eyes, while tears trickled incessantly from under the lids.
"Dear, dear, I love you," she said to herself, and her lover was far away from her thoughts. On the throne of life a bowed old woman seemed to sit alone. "Oh, I'll be better to you after this, only live and give me a chance." She drew her limp figure up suddenly and turned her back on Harry's whispered solicitude. A lightning-like realization came, as she sat there, of what the life of this woman had meant to her. And it was going—going—would be gone, perhaps, before Val got home. She covered up her face. She told herself it was no common relation that she bore to the ancientchâtelaineof the Fort. Something deeper than the blood tie, a thing wrought out of sheer personal force, hammered out of antagonisms, welded with fear and with love, and binding, abiding gratitude for a glimpse of the unconquerable mind.
She saw now that if life from the beginning had never worn that cheap and shabby air that it did to many girls without wealth or family distinction; if, from the beginning, and day by day to the end, life had carried itself bravely in the tumble-down old home; if in the leanest years it had never lacked dignity, nor ever lost its faint old-world fragrance; Val knew who it was who had wrought the spell, and who had maintained it against all comers.
And this magical power was threatened; this costly life in danger. It suddenly seemed the one thing in the world best worth preserving. A few hours before she had faced the idea of its loss so willingly—her tears gushed afresh at the memory—even with an obscure, impatient longing she had thought of this thing, that she saw now in its true aspect, as unspeakably terrible and tragic. For it was something irreparable. There was nothing likeherin theworld; the things that went to her making had passed away. To think that all that was represented by such a spirit—that a force like this, after enduring and dominating life so long, should go out into Nothingness—why, it was merely incredible. But the presentment of the possibility had shaken the foundations of the world.
It was close on midnight when Val and Wilbur drove up to the gate.
"Harry," said the girl, "you've been so kind, be kinder still: let me go in alone."
"Very well. I'll come back in a quarter of an hour to see if I can do anything."
There was a light in the long room. Val lifted the knocker, and as it fell Emmie opened the door. It seemed to Val that her sister's face said "Death." She pushed past her without greeting, and into the long room. Mrs. Gano was sitting in the great chair. She leaned forward, holding fast by the arms. The veil falling on either side her face did not hide, or even soften, the expression of concentrated contempt with which she said, very low:
"So you've come back."
"Y—yes. I thought—"
"You thought you'd come before it was too late."
"Yes; I was afraid—"
"I'm glad there'ssomethingyou're afraid of doing, though I can scarce imagine what."
Val put her hand up, bewildered, to her eyes.
"The last thing I would have believed of Valeria Gano was that she would do something underhand."
"Oh, but I didn't—"
"You didn't pretend to me that you were going to visit Mrs. Austin Ball when you were really running after Ethan?"
"I haven't been running after any one."
"Did he write you to come?"
"No."
"Did he expect you?"
"No."
"Some one who went up in the same train with you has had the audacity to bring back the report that you went to the hotel to see Ethan before you went to Mrs. Ball's at all."
Val did not make the expected denial.
"I'm ashamed of you"—the old face worked—"I've never been ashamed before of a woman of this house."
"I am not ashamed," said Val.
"Then all I can say is"—Mrs. Gano extended her shawled arm—"you are without the feelings of a decent woman."
Val had sat down like one dazed.
"Ask Emmeline," said the old voice, shaking as it rose; "the whole town is ringing with the story, how you left your home under false pretences, and pursued this man, who cares nothing for you—"
"He does care for me." Val's nerves quivered under her grandmother's derisive laugh, but it did not escape her that Emmie had caught convulsively at the corner of the great buffet, and was leaning against the pillared cupboard.
"I dare say," observed Mrs. Gano, "that Ethan cares for a good many ladies, if the truth's told, but he doesn't get most of them to run about the country after him; that honor is reserved for you."
"Wait!" Val struggled to her feet with a sense that she was choking. "I'll tell you the honor that's reserved for me: Ethan cares more for me than for any one in the world."
Emmie leaned forward with white face and glittering eyes.
"Indeed," said Mrs. Gano, "and when is the wedding, if one may know?"
Val sank slowly back in the chair, dropping her hands at her sides and her gloves on the floor.
Emmie drew herself up, and the color came back into her face.
"It's only an indefinite engagement as yet, perhaps,"said the younger girl. Her dark eyes flew to Val's hands. "Did he give you a ring?"
"Yes," said Val, mechanically.
"Why don't you wear it?"
"What is that to you—to any one but Ethan and me?"
"Itissomething to your family," said Mrs. Gano. "I, too, should like to see the engagement ring."
Val thought of the gossip-loving town, the endless questions, "When is the wedding?" "Why the delay?"
"There is no engagement."
"You said he gave you a ring." Emmie's words were quick and glad under their suspicion.
"I can't show you Ethan's ring."
"Why, where's your own?" Emmie came nearer.
Val got up and faced her sister with angry eyes.
"How dareyoucross-question me? Don't you suppose I know it'syouthat have brought in the town's chatter, and magnified it, and—"
"Your sister has done no more than her duty. She at least cares something for the family dignity. She has felt all this gossip to the quick."
"I've no doubt of it," said Val.
"Where ismyring?"
"Y—your ring?"
"Yes,myengagement ring. There has never been any need to hide that."
"I—"
"Ah, I see! there, too, you took the initiative. You don't bring back a ring, but you left one behind.Hehas a pledge to show, if you haven't. But my ring was never meant for that; send and get it back. Give me your arm, Emmeline." They passed Val by. At the threshold the old woman turned. "Send and get it back, I say!"
A soft knock at the front door arrested her.
"Go and see, Emmeline." Mrs. Gano sat down on the chair just inside the door, averting her face from Val. At the sound of Wilbur's voice she half rose. "Atthishour!"
"Oh, he just wants to see me a moment." Val moved forward.
Mrs. Gano stood up, blazing through her spectacles, and cut off the retreat.
"Emmeline will remind him that you are not now away from your own home. As long as I'm here, life under this roof must be conducted with some decorum."
"Oh, grandmamma, grandmamma!" said Val, hysterically, beginning to laugh and to cry all at once, "don't you see? We thought you were dying, and he's come to see if he can do anything."
"Dying, indeed!" Her tone was that of one resenting some far-fetched impertinence. "Go and tell him that I never felt better in my life, and that he'd better go home."
Mrs. Gano did not appear the next day, nor the next. Val watched her opportunity that second evening, when Emmie was out of the way, to go into her grandmother's room and see for herself how she was.
Mrs. Gano certainly appeared in excellent health. She was up, and she was dressed with all her customary care. Standing by the window in the waning light, she bent her veiled head over a book.
"Good-evening, grandmamma; how are you?"
Mrs. Gano turned and looked over her spectacles.
"Good-evening."
"I was afraid you were ill."
"You are very determined I shall be ill, it seems to me."
"No, no, but I naturally wanted to come and—" She stopped, feeling too chilled and rebuffed to say more.
"To come and bring me back my ring?"
Val, without answering, walked to the door.
"Youdidgive it to Ethan? Answer me."
"Yes, grandmamma."
"Have you got it back?"
"No, grandmamma."
"But you've heard from him?"
"Yes—Emmie must have told you—letters and telegrams."
"Had you written him to send back my ring?"
"No, grandmamma."
"Why not?"
It crossed the girl's mind, "Suppose I tell her, 'Because I saw him throw it away.'" She smiled faintly.
"You will write for it to-night. Go and do so at once."
"No, I'm sorry; I can't do that—I'm sorry;" and she went out.
Val had a glimpse of her the next morning, when Mrs. Gano made her final cold-weather "flitting" from the blue room up-stairs to the long room down-stairs. But it was Emmie and the servants who assisted. The removal was in the act of being finished when Val appeared on the scene. No notice was taken of her. She went out and walked about the garden. Returning to the house a little later, she met Emmie coming down the steps of the porch with a letter.
"Where are you going?"
"To the post-office, and grandma doesn't want to be disturbed."
"Then you'd better go stand guard at the door."
"Oh, she can lock the door."
"I'm going to the post-office; I can take the letter."
"No."
"Give it to me, I say."
"I won't!"
"I saw the address; it shall never go."
"Grandma!" Emmie called, with all her might, holding the letter to her breast and backing up the steps. "Grandma!"
"How the old scenes of childhood repeat themselves," thought Val. "I've been 'going for her,' and she's been shouting 'Grandma!' ever since we came here as little girls."
"Grandma!" Emmie was still calling, and the long room door opened.
"I want to speak to you," said Val to her grandmother.
"Val won't let me take your letter—"
"Go this instant and do as I told you," said Mrs. Gano to Emmie.
Val barred the front door.
"I must speak to you, grandmamma, before that letter goes out of the house."
"Let me go, I say." Emmie struggled to get by. Val stood firm.
"How dare you—" Mrs. Gano began.
"I dare for a very good reason, and I'll tell you what it is if you'll take the letter and let me speak to you alone."
They stood looking at each other for a moment over Emmie's shoulder. Then Mrs. Gano caught the letter out of Emmie's hand and went back into her room. Val noticed how feebly she walked, followed, and quickly shut and locked the door.
"Open that door," said her grandmother.
"I want to speak to you alone."
"Open my door."
Val did so.
"Open it wide."
She obeyed.
"Emmeline, go away, and don't come back till I call you. Now," she resumed, as Emmie's footsteps died away, "let us understand—Who is mistress in this house?"
"You are."
"Very well, then."
"But you are notmymistress."
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean there are some things I must decide for myself."
"I've ceased to trouble myself for the moment aboutyourdecisions."
"That letter of yours to Ethan is to take something that concerns me more than anybody here—to take it out of my hands."
"If you can't manage your own concerns with propriety, your family must help you."
"No, I won't be helped." They looked at each other. "I must make my own mistakes. It's I who have to live with them; I've a right to choose which they shall be."
"As your natural guardian, it is well within my province to write to my grandson about your unheard-of conduct."
"No."
"Oh," she laughed derisively, "then, maybe, you will at least permit me to write and ask that my property be returned to me."
"Your ring?"
"My ring."
"No—please—"
But the "please" was drowned in a tide of indignation.
"I've had enough of your preposterous assurance. I'll write what and to whom I choose."
"Ethan won't read your letter. I'll wire that he is not to."
"It's likely he'll obey you!"
"Oh, be very sure he will."
The angry old eyes were wide with wonder. What was the relation between these two?
"Has he asked you to marry him?"
"No;" and she smiled.
"You think he will?"
"Yes, I think he will."
She opened her lips to say "When?" but some astute sense had come to her of how far she could go. She contented herself with a haughty lifting of the head.
"In my young days—"
"Yes, yes, but things aren't always so simple now. Oh, haven't you any faith in me, or in Ethan either?"
"My faith has had a rude shock."
"That was only because I didn't take you into my confidence. But don't you know there are some things it's hard to tell to older people? Oh,don't you remember, grandmamma!" the girl cried.
"H'm!" but the face gradually softened.
"Give us a little time, and it'll all come right. You don't want to get rid of me instantly, do you?"
"You know quite well—"
"Yes, yes, you'd like us to be old maids, but I—" she shook her head in the manner of one regretfully declining an impossible request. "May I shut the door?"
"Yes."
She came back, sat down on the crimson footstool at the side of the chair, and laid her head on the arm.
"Please be kind to me," she said; "it's very lonely here at the Fort when you aren't kind." Neither moved for several moments, and then Val felt the touch on her hair. The tears rushed suddenly into her eyes. She took the hand and kissed it. "How beautiful your hands are!" she said, laying her cheek in the palm, and then raising her head to look again. "The inside is the color and the texture of a rose-leaf."
"Is that the kind of thing Ethan has been saying to you?" The inquiry rang a little grimly.
"Oh no," Val laughed. "He couldn't.Myhands aren't beautiful." They were quiet awhile. "I haven't much that I can tell you, dear," the girl went on, "but that I'm very happy—oh, the happiest person in the world!" She smiled up into the vigilant old face. "And that in the end I shall have what—what I've wanted since I was sixteen—oh, ever since I was born, I think." She lowered her eyes, and the red came into her cheeks.
"And Ethan?"
"Oh, he's happy, too. But that's not the partIcan tell you."
"Where is he? What is he going to do?"
"He's got a great burden of responsibility on him just now, with the elections coming on. He's going to the Chicago Convention, you know."
"H'm! Well, I don't pretend to fathom those newfangled arrangements—but understand one thing—"
"Yes?"
"I won't have him here till there's a formal announcement."
"Very well, dear." But the bright face fell.
It was a little over a year after this that Mrs. Gano's life was despaired of.
"A complication of troubles, no one of them very serious, but all together, and at her age—"
The doctor completed the sentence with a gesture.
The next day Ethan stood with his cousins at the bedside.
"I did not send for you," was Mrs. Gano's greeting.
"No; Val did," volunteered Emmie, who had not been told the result of the doctor's consultation.
"Val"—the sick woman raised her head—"you take a great deal upon yourself."
She sank back exhausted. Val could not read in Ethan's eyes that he had abandoned hope. But the girl's heart was full of dread. She went softly out of the room.
"Oh, grandma, you've hurt her feelings," said Emmie, gently.
"Nonsense!"
"I saw tears in her eyes. Think of Val crying!"
"It's no great affair that one should cry now and then. Perhaps it's just as well that you've come, after all." She fixed a far from hospitable look upon her grandson. "I was about to write you. Leave us awhile, Emmeline." She closed her eyes as the girl went out, as if to summon strength. "I don't approve of the tone of your last letter to Val."
Ethan stared.
"Oh, she reads me parts still. She reads me a great deal. The tone of the later ones, especially the last—"
She shook her head with a weak, slow movement.
"I am sorry you think—"
"We haven't time to waste being sorry; let us be different." With sudden energy she pulled out one page of a letter from under her pillow. "I haven't eyesight to read your shocking writing, my dear—"
"No, no; don't try. I remember what you mean. I won't make fun of the Churchman in politics any more—not in my letters. I apologize to the bishop."
"Oh,that"—she smiled—"that was rather amusing, though not in the best taste. No; what I mean was on the last page. Read from 'whom the gods love.'"
"Do you mean this quotation?"
"Yes."
"'Life, though a good to men on the whole, is a doubtful good to many, and to some not a good at all.' Is that it?"
"Yes. What's the rest?"
"'To my thought it is a source of constant mental distortion to make the denial of this a part of religion—to go on pretending things are better than they are. To me early death takes the aspect of salvation.'"
"Now I ask you, Can you find nothing better than that to say to a girl?"
"It was not I who found it."
"You say it's George Eliot. Well, she had too much sense to present that view to a young girl. She put it in a diary. If you've nothing better to put into yours, so much the worse for you. Don't you know there are two ways of interpreting 'whom the gods love die young'?"
"Yes"—he smiled—"'young' when they die at eighty." And he looked at the living commentary.
"Very well; it's a view to keep in mind. But it's not only occasional things like that that I deprecate in your letters; the letters themselves should cease."
"Really." He drew himself up and returned her direct look, but the wasted face and sunken eyes struck compunction to his heart. "Very well," he said, soothingly.
"It's not very well at all, but very ill, that you should try to waive the subject."
"Waive it?"
"Yes. You think I'm dying, and you won't oppose me. I'm not dying, and I mean to see Val through this before Idodie."
"Through what?"
"Through her foolish befogment about you. I had a long talk with Harry Wilbur last week. He has behaved well.You—" She paused, as if trying to pluck out the heart of his mystery; then, abandoning the attempt: "I want you to promise me before you leave this room that you'll go away by the next train, and that you won't see Val, or write to her, till one or other of you is safely and suitably married."
He had a moment's temptation to pacify her at all costs, but as he looked into the old face he felt that a degradation would cling to him if he played falsely with a spirit as honest and courageous as this. She wasn't a woman one could lie to comfortably.
"I can't promise you that," he said, after a struggle.
"Why not?"
"Oh, the old reason," he answered, with a look of weary pain.
"What is that?"
She craned her head forward.
"You have to ask?"
"I have to ask."
"I love her."
"And don't you know—" Her loyalty to Val stopped her. "Why don't you tell her?"
"I have."
"Then, why aren't you— What's the trouble?"
"What's the trouble?" he echoed.
"Yes. You surely aren't waiting for me to go?"
"No, no," he said, hastily, feeling his fears for the moment dislodged and feebly flying like a flock of bats and owls before the daylight in the brave old eyes. "No, no; you are not the barrier."
"What then?"
"I suppose, primarily, it's Uncle John. He left us a legacy."
"John!"
A sudden mist of weakness rose before her like a veil.
"Yes."
Ethan turned away, and paced the dim room from the bedside to the fireplace, back and forth. It came over the sick woman that it was just so John had walked and talked about this life he lacked the energy to live. How like him Ethan was growing in air and manner! It was as if John had got up out of his grave to walk the old track in the old restless fashion. What was it he was saying about "the wreck of creeds"?
"—the mere expediency of the conventions right and wrong, and yet man's hopeless struggle to be rid of the phantom Duty. If you pass the churches by, she confronts you in the schools, in the laboratory, follows you in the streets, dogs you day and night, the 'implacable huntress.' We may free ourselves from all superstitions but Duty. She, in one guise or another, is ever at the heels of men."
"You wouldn't be a Gano if you didn't feel so," she said, wondering vaguely if she had dreamed Ethan's coming and John's going.
Which was it, walking the worn and faded track on Valeria's old blue Brussels?
"Exactly. So Uncle John said."
Ah, then it was Ethan!
"What was it John said?"
She drew herself up, and shook off the veil of faintness.
"Several unforgettable things about man's first duty to the race—about not inflicting upon others the burdens Val and I must bear."
"Burdens!" (Ah, she remembered now what they had been talking about.) "What burden, I'd like to know, does Val bear that you can't lift?"
"Her father's."
"Humph! And you?"
"She and I are of one blood. We carry a double share."
"And let me tell you"—she sat up straight in the great bed—"a double share of Gano is no bad addition to the world's brew."
"Did you ever say that to Uncle John?"
"Good Heaven! To hear you talk, a body'd think you had invented the law of heredity—you and your uncle John."
"God forbid!"
"Well, Godhasforbid, and let that content you. He is quite capable of looking after His own world."
Ethan's faint head-shake and his smile seemed to infuriate her.
"My good soul, you take too much responsibility. It doesn't lie with you to refashion the world. God's universe has been good enough for a great many good people."
"That it has been good enough for you doesn't cover the question," he said, brutally, adding in haste, "even if you didn't deceive yourself. It is not, as things are, good enough for all. But Uncle John was right: it would be a better place to live in if people hesitated to perpetuate disease."
"Perpetuate disease! What folly you talk! Don't you see that your improved new modes of living breed new diseases? If you have not the cholera of my youth, you have the Bright's disease and the influenza that we knew nothing of. Disease is part of the plan."
"What an awful doctrine!"
"Not at all.Ican't be sure that it wouldn't leave the world poorer if disease were got rid of. I'm not, like you, ready to arraign the Everlasting." (Val opened the door softly, came in, and stood at the foot of the bed.) "To my finite mind, unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out. I only know that they are just, and that I am the work of His hand."
"I envy you your faith."
"No, you don't. You think yourself superior to it, and what's the result? You walk in darkness."
"Not altogether in darkness." He looked across at the girl.
"Yes, in darkness and in fear. Not the fear of God—that's tonic—but in the fear of pain. Oh, I've watched this phase of modern life. It's been coming, coming for years. The world to-day is crushed and whining under a load of sentimentality. People presently will be afraid to move, lest they do or receive some hurt."
"All people don't wear your armor."
"There is no armor but God," she said, in a clear voice. "'We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.'"
He bent and kissed her hand. She withdrew it and laid it on his head, smoothing the thick, dark hair.
"You carry one Gano burden that I pity you for: you think too much about life."
"Ah, and it doesn't bear being thought about?"
"But Val will help you there," she went on, ignoring the question. "All she asks is the wages of going on." She reached out a hand to the girl, who came and stood by her cousin. "Val hasn't the letter, but she has the spirit. Remember, you two, when you come in the modern way to pick flaws in the Faith, that if I wore stout armor, as you say, it was not of this world's forging. Remember, that I told you I could not have lived the half—no, nor the quarter part of my long life, if I had not been 'persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.'" She closed her eyes. "Now go and leave me, you two. I am tired."
Treading softly, Ethan went out of the room. Val watched beside her till the night-nurse came.
The next morning Mrs. Gano sent for the clergyman (through Emmie, saying nothing to the others), and took the Communion.
"It's a habit of mine," she told Ethan afterwards. "I always commune several times a year."
"Only at Easter and Christmas," Val told him privately, afterwards. "But she is angry if we seem to notice anything unusual."
About four o'clock Emmie, who did not appreciate the gravity of the situation, came in from visiting a young girl who was very ill—not expected to live.
"Oh, grandma, you should have seen her! so gentle and so resigned; saying good-bye to all her friends." Emmie broke down.
"H'm! I consider that an unnecessary strain on the feelings."
"Oh no," remonstrated Emmie; "it was beautiful! She prayed for us all."
"She might do that without making a scene."
"Oh, grandma, you don't realize what it was like. I never saw any one so ready for the other life as Ada Brown."
"Oh yes, you have. The best 'getting ready' isn't done on death-beds."
"You're so unsympathetic," murmured the girl.
"Yes, I've hated scenes all my life; but death-bed scenes I consider indecent."