The Open Question Part 16

Ethan preserved an embarra.s.sed 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 than _that_ in 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 tw.a.n.g, 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 you _sure_?" said Mrs. Gano, stopping short. "Was that Tom Rockingham _again_?"

"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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 pa.s.sed 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 mandate except 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-gla.s.s 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 you _care_ about 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 gla.s.s stopper in; they can't breathe."