The Open Question Part 102

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 refas.h.i.+on the world. G.o.d'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. _I_ can'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 G.o.d--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 G.o.d," 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 princ.i.p.alities, 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 G.o.d.'" 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."

"_Oh!_" Emmie got up and, with deeply injured looks, prepared to withdraw.

"If you haven't done your best, it's too late when you're dying to try to mend things. If you _have_ done your best, there's no more to be said."

And no more _was_ said for several hours. She lay quite peacefully, took the half-hourly restoratives from Val, but was visibly weaker on each occasion. Ethan went out and sent for the doctor. He came back in time to lift the half-unconscious form up in his arms, while Val held a gla.s.s to the pale lips.

"Enough," she whispered; "lay me down." And it was done. She opened her eyes and faintly pressed Val's hand. "Good girl," she said.

A slight spasm pa.s.sed over her face. She turned her head away, clutched the sheet, and, with what seemed a superhuman effort, drew it over her face. Ethan put out his hand to take it away, but Val arrested him.

"Don't! don't! She would never let any one see when she suffered." The girl fell sobbing at the bedside.

Some time after, Val drew the linen down. The suffering was over, so was the long life.

Venus and the "new" servant had taken turns to sit through the day in the long room, where the body lay. Ethan was to watch through the night, but Val had insisted that she should be there from ten till midnight while Ethan slept, before his watch began. He opposed her plan, but gave way at last and went to lie down--not to sleep. Just before twelve o'clock he came out of his room, down over the head of his old enemy Yaffti, and stopped outside the long room door. Again a remembrance of his childhood's awe, and the queer sense that he ought, in spite of all, to knock to-night before going in. He turned the k.n.o.b and entered softly.

The long, straight outlines of the coffin set high upon a bier, the candles burning at the head, and in the shadow at the coffin's side a deeper shadow on the floor. As his eyes became accustomed to the light, he saw it was his cousin crouching there on her knees, with bowed head and hands folded straight before her, palm to palm. He went forward and tried to lift her.

"No, let me alone; I--I want to pray."

"To pray, Val?"

She bowed her white face.

"Not to G.o.d--I don't know about G.o.d--but there's some one else now out in the vague, and I--I have need of her."

Her face drooped out of sight, and the moments pa.s.sed. The motionless figure with the folded palms might have been a mortuary marble on an ancient tomb, so rigid was it, so uninformed by life. Ethan sat at the coffin's foot and watched the candles flare.

What if this shock and jar were to send Val back to the faith of her fathers? What was it in its lesser effect upon himself? What was it working in him? He looked at the long, dim outlines. Death! For the girl, too, with her joy of life, her greed of consciousness, and for him, this hour would come, of rigid quiet, and of watchers in the candle-light. He s.h.i.+vered involuntarily, glancing at the kneeling figure. Death! How much he had thought about it, and how little he had seen. Here it was beside him in a narrow box. He turned away his eyes, seized upon afresh by its horror and its fascination. That moment of dissolution, what had it been like? Even the brave old woman had covered up her face. He peered a moment into the pit, realizing for that instant the wrenching away of life's supports, the plunge, the sinking to the bottom. With an effort he reminded himself of the peace, too, awaiting all down there, and its being the only possible solution to the riddle of the world. But the end--the end! Earthquake and avalanche it is, for the one who lies a-dying; fire and flood and shock of battle, the true end of the world. For us the lamp of the sun was lit on the day of our birth, for us the stars will be snuffed out and chaos come again when we lie down to die.

Had it been like that with her--this dead woman at his elbow? He stood up; cautiously he came to the coffin's head, with parted lips, like one about to put an eager question. He laid back the white sheet. At sight of the tranquil features his own tense look relaxed. Ah, no; for that steadfast spirit the end had brought no terror, or if it had, the quiet face kept triumphantly its secret. A movement down in the shadow, and Val lifted her head, but not as high as the coffin.

"Ethan!"--she clutched his hand--"don't you feel how alive she is? Hus.h.!.+

in a moment she will speak. I've asked her for a sign."

They waited--in that silence that wraps the world. Then Val stood up, and gave a cry as she beheld the face for the first time since the "laying out." She caught up the candle, and held up the light before the dead, as she had held it before the living woman on that evening long ago, when Ethan saw her first.

"Oh, Ethan, Ethan," said the girl, "_she's smiling_! That's her answer."