The Open Question Part 18

She had been so _awfully_ kind--it was useless to pretend there was any other way of putting it--and she had cared so much for his father.

_Ought_ he to have kissed her? It was plain she had expected it. It was all very uncomfortable and heart-achy.

Now he was in the hall, and Uncle Elijah was there, and so was grandmamma, being very stiff to poor Uncle Elijah. Aunt Valeria came down-stairs, and the good-byes were said. Uncle Elijah's hack was at the door, and Ethan's trunk was being carried out.

Suddenly, at the very last, "Come here a moment," said his grandmother, retreating into her own long room.

Ethan followed, quaking. Had he been doing something wrong? And yet she had just kissed him good-bye so kindly. As she turned and faced him, he saw her eyes were full of tears. He could hardly believe his senses, but he began to cry, too.

"I _do_ wish I was going to stay with you," he said, breaking down and forgetting his fears.

"You will come back to me," she said; and she put her arms round him, and held him close to her for a moment, while he cried silently against her white veil, thinking the while she wouldn't like it when she discovered it was wet.

"Don't you think," he faltered, as she released him--"couldn't _this_ be my home?"

"Of course, it _is_ your home. Isn't your name on the front door?"

"Oh yes," he said, smiling through his tears; "I forgot that," and the remembrance seemed to give him confidence in the future.

Mrs. Gano was looking hastily about for some excuse for bringing him into the room.

"Here is a book that belonged to your great-grandfather, called _Plutarch's Lives_. You will read it when you are older, and remember it was my parting present after your first visit."

"Oh, thank you," he said, brus.h.i.+ng his sleeve across his eyes; and they went out, and Ethan got into the carriage. "Oh, dear me, my fireflies!"

he shouted, suddenly, as the driver was closing the door. "I shall need them so awfully--I mean so pertickly--in Boston"; and he scrambled out and rushed up to his bedroom.

"What does the child mean?" asked Mrs. Gano.

"It's all right," said Aunt Valeria; "something I gave him. I'll tell you afterwards."

Ethan came tumbling down-stairs in the buff middle of the carpet--anywhere, indifferent for once to Yaffti and his possible revenge.

"Good-bye," he called back from the carriage-window. "Thank you, ma'am, for _Plutarch_."

"Keep him covered," was Mrs. Gano's unemotional rejoinder as they drove away.

Ethan sank back breathless, clutching the camphor-bottle under his coat.

"Tired?" asked Uncle Elijah, looking at the flushed little face. Ethan nodded "Yes, sir."

"You needn't have hurried so; there's oceans of time. But I thought we could wait just as well at the station."

They were not going the way Ethan had been driven that day of his arrival, so long, long ago, at the beginning of the summer. He leaned forward excitedly.

"Why, he's taking us round by the Wilderness!"

"The what?" Uncle Elijah looked out. "Moses! they do let things run wild here."

Ethan's quick eye had sought out the spot where, hidden in that tangle, was a little clearing and a "heavenly secret-house," with a barberry-bush for a roof. But no hint of such a matter to the profane pa.s.ser-by!

What was that? His heart gave a great jump. Why, it was An' Jerusha on the lower terrace watching to see them go by! She stood there alone, and now she was putting her ap.r.o.n up to her eyes. n.o.body else was looking after the carriage from this side. It was plain, for all his grandmother's momentary melting, it was An' Jerusha who had felt the parting most, and he had refused to kiss her!

"Uncle Elijah," said the child, hurriedly, "do you mind, if we've got such a lot of time, I'd like to get a barberry leaf for my fire-flies.

Please stop!" he called out of the window to the coachman.

And while Uncle Elijah was saying, "What--what?--barberry leaves, fire-flies? What nonsense is this you've been learning?" Ethan had jumped out of the slowing vehicle, made a frantic sign to An' Jerusha, run up to the fence, pushed aside a loose picket of his acquaintance, and dashed into the wilderness. There was nothing for Uncle Elijah to do but to wait. The child had vanished without a trace; by the time Mr.

Tallmadge had adjusted his spectacles on his nose he couldn't even find the place where his nephew had disappeared. The eminent Bostonian sat fuming while Ethan was feverishly making his way to An' Jerusha.

"Come down!" he called, when he got near the bottom of the terrace.

"Come towards the barberry-bush, An' Jerusha--quick, quick!"

Her eyes rolling wildly with amazement and concern, Jerusha penetrated a few paces into the jungle.

"Wha is yo', honey? Wot's de matter? Air yo' hurt, my honey? Jes' wait; An' Jerusha's comin'."

"Oh, here I am," gasped the child, and he precipitated himself into her arms. "I forgot to kiss you good-bye, An' Jerusha, and I had to come back."

He shut his eyes and held his breath while she kissed him, muttering prayers and blessings.

"Good-bye, An' Jerusha," he said. "I sha'n't ever forget you;" and he tore his way back through the rank gra.s.ses, the mulleins and sunflowers, catching his feet in the briers, and saying to himself: "Oh, I'm quite sure my father never, _never_ did. But for me it's different; I'm glad I went back."

He stripped a handful of leaves and coral berries off the barberry-bush as he pa.s.sed, pushed back the loose picket, and reappeared all over burrs and pollen before Uncle Elijahs' astonished and unapproving eyes.

"I've got plenty of leaves for my fire-flies," was his greeting, as he clambered into the hack, "but I must get some water for them at the station. How many years should you say a fire-fly would live, Uncle Elijah, with plenty to eat and drink?"

CHAPTER VII

Ethan was not allowed to repeat his visit, and life went on for several years without incident at the old Fort. Yet, since "it is in the soul that things happen," these were stirring times. One shrinks from inquiring too closely into what the years held for the two eager-hearted women shut up there with those perilous companions, thwarted hope, stunted ambition, and pent-up energy. Well had it been for Valeria had she not possessed that small, cramped competency. If the girl had had to earn her living, she might have found peace, if not great gladness, in wholesome grappling with the material things of life. But in saying so one forgets that all this was thirty years ago, when a penniless Southern woman who had a brother, or even some distant relation, to support her, no more dreamed of getting her own bread than she does to-day of going before the mast.

Meantime, with John Gano things for a while went better. At the end of four years of uninterrupted toil, such years of all work and no play as only an American will put up with, he was able to offer his cousin the kind of home he had set his heart on. They were married in the South, and after a brief visit to Mrs. Gano, John took his bride to New York.

Ten months' happiness, followed by the birth of a daughter, whom they named Valeria, and called Val; then protracted ill-health and a yearly baby for the young mother, money troubles and killing work for John Gano.

The distance between New York and New Plymouth was too great to admit of much visiting back and forth on trivial grounds for people of limited means. But young Mrs. Gano was not expected to live after the birth of her fourth child, and her "aunt-mother-in-law" was sent for. The elder Mrs. Gano stayed till the danger was past, and, as she wrote home to her daughter, "to relieve Virginia a little of the pressure of existence,"

she had made up her mind to bring back Emmeline with her to the Fort.

Emmeline was the younger of the two little girls, and that was the reason given for her having been chosen instead of Val, since, with a new baby in the house, a child of fourteen months was more of a charge on its mother's mind even than an enterprising young person of four. But it was presently revealed that Emmeline was by far the more attractive child, gentle, charming, and very beautiful to look upon; rather like her cousin Ethan, whose loss was still mourned silently at the old Fort.

There was no further visiting between the two houses until the following winter, when Valeria's health broke down. Mrs. Gano would not hear it said that her daughter was dying of consumption.

"I've had a cough myself for half a century. Consumption? Nonsense!

Valeria had undermined her const.i.tution by too much study and a too sedentary life. What was to be expected when one remembered the hours she kept! But there! no Gano could ever do anything with moderation."

However, the jealous mother was alarmed at last, and admitted that what Valeria needed was a change.

"No," said the old-young woman; "I have reached the end."

A journey to the Adirondacks was proposed. Valeria refused to fall in with the plan.