The Open Question Part 15

"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.

CHAPTER VI

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 beat.i.tude, 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 feel _sure_ they'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 meant when He said, 'Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the d.a.m.nation of h.e.l.l?'"

"Because our Saviour distinctly says it of _that_ generation--centuries ago--of rebellious and unbelieving Jews."

"Oh-h!" He was only half rea.s.sured.

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 the _un_profitabubble servant that had to be cast into outer darkness, where there was weeping and gnas.h.i.+ng--"

"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. _All_ little 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 h.e.l.l, 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 G.o.d."

"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--"I _know_, 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 h.e.l.lespont, 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 write _Childe 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 Sh.e.l.ley?" 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, especially _etre_ and _avoir_; but grandfather says--"

"I notice you use that word 'awfully' a great deal. Do you know what it means?"