Although this visit was the only one Ethan was destined to pay to New
Plymouth before he came to man's estate, he carried back with him to
Boston at the holiday's end something more than an intimate
understanding with his father's people, and a vivid picture of the outer
aspect of life in the house of his grandmother.
Out of his fear of Aunt Jerusha that first evening grew the habit of
Valeria's visiting his room ten minutes or so after he had said
good-night. During those first evenings, when he was allowed a candle to
go to bed by, this small attention on his aunt's part was for the
ostensible purpose of putting out the light and opening his windows.
Later on she went for no better reason than that the child would be
expecting her. Absent-minded dreamer as she was, after the second
evening of Ethan's stay she never forgot what became her kindly custom.
On this particular evening, as she sat among the litter in the blue
room, her acute ears caught a faint sound of sobbing. She hurried into
the adjoining chamber, and found all dark and silent, Ethan breathing
regularly, apparently asleep. She bent over in the faint moonlight to
kiss him, and found his face wet with tears.
"My dear! Then it was _you_?"
"Me?" he inquired, in a steady voice.
"Yes. Why were you crying?"
After a pause:
"I thought the walls were so awful thick," he said, as if answering her
question with all circumstance.
"Shall I light the candle again?"
"No, thank you," he said, sedately; "I can see the moon through the
locust-tree."
She went to the window, and leaning her folded arms on the wide seat,
she repeated softly, as she looked out:
"'And, like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapt in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky east
A white and shapeless mass.'"
"Is that what you've been writing, Aunt Valeria?"
"No." She came back and sat down on the side of his bed. "No; Shelley
wrote it. What shall I do for you?" she said, wondering how women that
were used to children would meet the exigency, for the little voice was
plaintive in spite of itself.
"I don't want anything," Ethan said, stoutly, and there was another
pause. Then, by way of a delicate hint: "Grandmamma has been telling me
a story."
"Has she?"
"Yes; about when she was young. Tell me about when _you_ were young,
Aunt Valeria."
The innocent petition jarred. Valeria was the youngest of her family,
and had never yet been asked to think of herself as one who had left
youth behind.
"There's nothing to tell about me," she said.
"Didn't you ever cross the Alleghanies in a stage-coach?"
"No; all that was before my time."
"Didn't you ever go to visit your grandfather Calvert in the mountains
of Virginia?"
"No; he died before I was born."
"Then, you never got homesick?" His voice wavered a little, and then,
quite firmly, he added: "Grandmamma did, and she used to go off by
herself to meet the postman, who came only once a week, and she'd walk
and walk till she heard him wind his horn. How do you 'spose he wound
it?"
"He just blew a long blast."
"Did that make it wind? Well, anyhow, when he wound it, that used to
make grandmamma homesicker than ever. It used to echo all about among
her grandfather's mountains, and when she heard that she used to stop
running, and sit down on a rock and cry and cry. You see, she was so
afraid the postman wasn't bringing the letter to say Aunt Cadwallader
was coming to take her home."
"Did my mother tell you that story to-night?" inquired Aunt Valeria,
without enthusiasm.
"No; it was this morning, when I said I wasn't a bit homesick like Aunt
Hannah said I'd be. Grandmamma seemed to think it didn't matter if I
_was_ homesick. The Ganos nearly always are, but in the end they're
always glad they came."
This obscure saying seemed not to rivet Aunt Valeria's attention; she
moved as if she were going. Ethan sat up in bed and asked, a little
feverishly:
"Did you know about Aunt Cadwallader bein' in the war?"
"No; I never heard she was in the war."
"Well, she _was_. She was about four years old, and the British were
firing on Fort McHenry, and all the doors and windows in Baltimore were
shut, and nobody went out, and everybody was living in the cellar, so's
not to get shot, and bombs were exploding in the garden, and the fambly
missed Aunt Cadwallader--"
"Oh yes," said Aunt Valeria; "she was out in the garden, wasn't she,
picking up the bullets?"
"Yes; they were raining all about, and she was putting them in a little
egg-basket she carried on her arm." Ethan finished, a shade crestfallen
to find his scheme to entertain and, above all, to detain his aunt had
been forestalled. "I thought perhaps if I told you you'd remember
something that happened to _you_--when you were young, you know."
"I'm sorry I don't know any stories."
"Don't you know the one about the poor man over your fireplace?"
"What poor man?" she repeated, bewildered.
"The man without his clo'es on, tied to the wild horse."
"Oh, you mean the Mazeppa on the iron fire frame."
"Yes"--Ethan sat up again, with dilated eyes--"wolfs comin' after him,
wif mouths wide open."
"Oh, well, they don't eat him up; he gets away, and lives happy ever
after."
"I _am_ glad!"
He lay down, and she covered him up.
"I'd sing to you, but I'm afraid it would disturb my mother."
"Then, couldn't you say some more poetry or something?"
"I don't believe I know anything you'd like."
"Oh, I'd like anything--except the 'May Queen.'"
She sat silent a moment, and then began:
"'Once upon a midnight dreary--'
"H'm!"--and she stopped.
"Can't you remember any more?" inquired the boy, eagerly.
"Well--a--perhaps something else;" and she made a fresh start:
"'Ah, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
"'Ah, what can--'
No, no; I must think of something a little less--"
Another pause, and then:
"'Raise the light, my page, that I may see her:
Thou hast come at last, then, haughty queen.'"
On and on the low voice chanted, whispered, verse after verse and page
on page, until the child slept sound. In this wise was the habit formed
of Aunt Valeria's prolonging her nightly ministrations till Ethan was
safe beyond the touch of homesickness, beyond the need of a doubtful
cheer. From most of her selections, it must be confessed, he derived
only the vague comfort of listening to the rhythmic rise and fall of a
friendly, sleep-wooing voice, that sent him softly to oblivion. But as
the days went on he developed tyrannous preferences, and would call for
"The Neckan" as regularly as he had been used in infancy to demand "The
New England Cat." He managed to keep awake longer as time went on, and
it took "The Ancient Mariner," or the solemn and somnolent-burdened
rhyme of the "Duchess May" to send him to the land of Nod. He came to
know these favorites by heart, and would prompt Valeria if she ventured
to skip or hesitated at a line. In after years he used to feel it odd to
realize how much English verse he knew by heart that he had never seen
upon the printed page. But Aunt Valeria's patience was sometimes sorely
taxed by his wide-eyed attention to the story. Then it was she would
unkindly lapse into German, against which no young wakefulness is proof.
"Now go to sleep," she would admonish, "or I'll say 'Kennst du das
Land.'" Notwithstanding it was a very dull poem, she would say it over
and over, and Ethan, vanquished utterly, would fall asleep with the
refrain, "Dahin, Dahin, Möcht ich mit Dir O mein Geliebter ziehn,"
sounding in his ears. He had his own view of what it was all about, and
classed it with such ditties as "Annabel Lee." "Dahin" he was satisfied
was the heroine, and he determined on his return to Boston to bestow the
name upon the least attractive of three terrier puppies, fresh arrivals
in his absence.
There was no one to play with, apparently, here in New Plymouth, but few
children could have felt the lack so little as Ethan. Nobody interfered
with him, nobody seemed to want him to study. The spectre of Grandfather
Tallmadge was still potent enough to make him carry about a French
grammar in the shallow jacket-pocket, that was always ejecting it upon
an indifferent world. Ethan, on its every _mal à propos_ appearance,
would hurry the book out of sight with an uneasy conscience, and betake
himself into the wilderness, where he owned an oasis under a
barberry-bush; or he would seek diversion from linguistic cares in the
sooty attic. Nobody seemed to mind, if only he were washed when he
appeared on the surface again. That same attic, however, was a place of
peril. You gained access to it by means of a ladder in a closet on the
upper landing, and you went up through a trap-door into a dim and
stifling atmosphere; not but what there were windows, but they seemed to
admit only heat and soot. There was an army of disabled or disused pots,
pitchers, vases, and so on, standing in the middle of the rough wooden
floor, and above them stretched a long table like a counter, on which
were ranged queer lamps and candlesticks, brackets, door-knobs, pewter
vessels and great platters, candlesnuffers and trays, and all manner of
household goods and gear that had then been long out of fashion, and had
not yet come back again. With grimy fingers Ethan poked about, taking
great care not to step off the middle aisle of flooring on to the lath
and plaster between the mighty hand-hewn beams. Sometimes, in more
daring moods, he would venture farther afield, balancing cautiously on a
beam to some remote cobwebby corner to examine nearer an object that had
lured him long with its air of the unattainable. In this way he made
acquaintance with certain pictures turned disobligingly to the wall, and
a great horse-hair trunk, into which he peeped with palpitating heart;
for all the world knew that such trunks were the abode of skeleton
ladies. But here were only dusty papers. The far corner he never
ventured into: it was there the great elk antlers shone, and the skull
and white teeth grinned and threatened. One had just to pretend it was
chained there, and strained impotently to get at little boys. Turning
over a lot of ancient rubbish in a box one day, he came across a heavy
old brass door-knocker with "E. Gano" on it. Down-stairs he rushed, all
black and beaming.
Mrs. Gano was sitting, as usual, very upright in the great red chair,
with Dean Stanley's _History of the Eastern Church_ open on her knees.
"My child, you're like a blackamoor!"
"But just look what I've found!"
"Ah, yes! I had that taken off the front-door the last thing before I
left Maryland."
"Why didn't you put it on the front-door _here_?"
"You see, it's 'E. Gano.' There was no 'E. Gano' then," she said, with
shadowed face.
"But there is now--I'm here."
"To be sure," she answered, smiling. "As your grandfather said, 'It's
necessary to have an Ethan in every generation to avoid re-marking
things.' We'll have the knocker put up, if you like. Venie will polish
it."
"Shall I ask her please to come to you as soon as she's done her work?"
he said, hesitatingly, for an interview with these black women was not
yet lightly to be faced.
"Tell her I want her at once," said his grandmother, a little brusquely.
He was struck with her peremptoriness.
"Sha'n't I say 'please'?" he inquired.
"Certainly not. It's not as my servants please, but as I please. Tell
her to come."
Ethan knew now that his manner to Aunt Jerusha and her daughter must
have appeared abject according to Gano standards. He secretly determined
to adopt a loftier demeanor. Vain ambition! Never once in his life did
he find the accent, let alone the conviction, of the superior, except
with persons of his own station. Of servants he asked service
unwillingly, and, to the end of his days, with an uneasy sense that
somebody was being abased--he inclined to think it was himself. The
wages question never in his estimation touched the heart of the
obligation. Any underlining of the relation of master and servant was as
irksome to him as if he had come of generations of communists, instead
of a race of tyrannous slave-holders.
Venie brightened up the knocker till it shone like gold, and Aunt
Jerusha, who could do anything on earth, apparently, promised to come
round and screw it firmly in its place at exactly the angle it had taken
on the great white door "down South."
It was over this business of the knocker that Ethan made friends with
Aunt Jerusha. He was still mortally afraid of her, but he had come to
that point where he was able to snatch a fearful joy in passing quite
near her without flinching, as though she had been any ordinary white
person, whose eyes didn't roll, and whose plaited wool didn't escape in
little horns from under a flaming bandanna. He had insisted on carrying
the tool-box and the hammer and the big screw-driver from the kitchen
round to the front porch. It was so that his intention to be lofty and
aloof had ended. At the front-door stood his grandmother.
"You've got a lazy man's load," she said.
And, as if on purpose to justify her, down dropped the screw-driver on
the gravel, and out jumped the French grammar on the grass. He recovered
the book, and as he reached after the screw-driver away slid the hammer
off the tool-box.
"Put down your book. Don't try to do so many things at once. That's how
your great-uncle Rezin put out his eyes at Harper's Ferry, and Shelley
lost his life trying to read and sail a boat at the same time."
Who was this Shelley who was always being quoted, and where did he come
into the family saga? Byron, too, and others he hadn't heard mentioned
in Boston. The appearance of Aunt Jerusha see-sawing round the corner
was a welcome diversion, and soon the glittering knocker was screwed
firmly into place. It was a triumph. Aunt Valeria was called down to
see, and admitted it was resplendent!
"Isn't it _delicious_ having our very own Maryland knocker on the door
again!" remarked the young gentleman, with as heartfelt satisfaction as
though he had watched the decline and fall of the old house in the
South, and now saw the family fortunes to be mending.
His grandmother patted his shoulder.
"We say 'delicious' of good things to eat, not of door-knockers, even
when they come from Maryland."
"Oh, you wouldn't limit such a word as delicious to things we eat,"
remonstrated Aunt Valeria. "That's a point where I've always differed
from Byron."
"Then I'm surprised to hear it, for it's one of the few things he got
right."
The younger woman withdrew into her shell, making no rejoinder, but
pausing at the bottom of the stairs on her way back to her work, with an
air of perfunctory deference, to hear her mother out. Ethan watched the
two with interest, feeling that he and his aunt were in the same boat.
"We can't be too jealous of guarding the purity and honesty of
language," Mrs. Gano said, firmly. "Any one who has the smallest
pretence to caring for letters or for accuracy, or for _truth_, must do
what he can to oppose the debasing of the current coin of speech. If you
use words loosely, you'll begin to think loosely, and in the end you'll
find you've lost your sense of values, and one word means no more than
another. You'll be like Ethan here, who tells me 'bonny clabber' is
perfectly splendid, and that he 'loves' Jerusha's Johnny-cake. After
that, he mustn't say he loves you and me. It would be like kissing us
after the cat."
"It's a _kitten_," said Ethan, feeling froward and very bold.
His grandmother laughed delightedly.
"Oh, very well, we'll be accurate, if it's only about a kitten that I
haven't so much as seen."
The child flashed out to the veranda and returned with a small basket,
in which lay a diminutive coal-black object.
"You said you didn't like animals," he observed, reproachfully.
"I don't--not in the house."
"This one's very little to stay out o' doors."
"Yes, it's too little to stay here at all."
"Oh no, it isn't so little as that."
He pulled out its tail that it might look as long as possible, but it
would curl under. He lifted the creature up, clawing and feebly wailing.
"Why, Ethan," said Aunt Valeria over the banisters, "it hasn't got its
eyes open."
"Not just _yet_."
"Can it walk?"
"Well, not much," said Ethan, guardedly; "but nobody walks as young as
this. The Otways' cat brought it over in her mouth. They're nice to the
Otways' cat _in the kitchen_."
There was judgment delivered in the phrase.
"Venus must take the thing home," said Mrs. Gano, eying the wailing one
with coldness.
"Oh, grandmamma!"
There bade fair to be a duet of lamentation.
"It will die if it's left here."
"No, no; I'll take care of it." He clasped it fondly.
"We don't know what to do for such a young creature."
"Oh yes, we do," interrupted Ethan. He came nearer, notwithstanding Mrs.
Gano's edging away from her grimy descendant, and from the small,
wailing, trembling, clawing object on his breast. The child took hold of
her gown, and said, with ingratiating, upturned, face, "Dear grandmamma,
_couldn't_ we buy it a cow?"
The suggestion apparently pleased his unaccountable grandmother too well
for her to persist in banishing the kitten. So "Duchess May," as Ethan
insisted on calling her, became an acknowledged member of the sooty
circle in the kitchen, and was well and safely brought up without the
immediate superintendence of a cow.
Mrs. Gano's refusal to admit the Duchess to other parts of the house
resulted in Ethan's spending a good deal of his time, too, in Aunt
Jerusha's society. She turned out to be a most interesting and
accomplished person. No wonder his father had thought well of her, but
as to--no, he never, never could have kissed her!
Aunt Jerusha sang the most wonderful songs.
The words were not very intelligible for the most part, but that didn't
matter: the effect was all the more exciting and mysterious. There was
one monotonous chant she used solemnly to give forth when she was
polishing the dining-room table--something about
"... de body ob de Lawd.
An' dat was wot He meant
W'en He said He'd brought a sword,
An' no mo' peace on de earf!"
Then a string of undistinguishable words, ending with something like--
"Oh, mighty keerful
All roun' de body ob de Lawd,
We done been a wrappin'
A w'ite linen napkin
All round de body ob de Lawd.
He said He'd bring a sword,
An' no mo' peace on de earf!"
There was a wild melancholy in the air that made the child's heart
tremble in his breast. Particularly on wet days, when he couldn't go
down into the wilderness, he used to stand in the doorway with the
Duchess in his arms, listening with all his ears.
"An' Jerusha," he said, one morning during a thunderstorm, when she
polished the oak in persistent silence, "why don't you sing? Grandmamma
can't hear."
"No, Massa Efan, not to-day."
"Why not? This is just the day to, when the rain's makin' such a noise
you can sing as loud as you like."
"Yo' won't nebber ketch dis nigger raisin' no chunes on de twenty-firs'
ob July."
"Why not?"
"Don' you know, little massa, dis de day yo' fader died?"
"Oh-h, is it?" A silence of some moments, broken only by the dash of
summer rain against the window-pane. "Did you know my father when he was
quite little?"
"Law, yes, littler'n you--so little, he couldn't walk by hisself. De
firs' time I done lef' him, jes' fur a minute, standin' in de big
arm-cheer by de winder, he turn roun' w'en he see I wusn't holdin' on t'
him, an' he yelled like forty--" She chuckled proudly, stopped suddenly,
and held out timid arms and made a baby face. "'Ow! ow! Efan fall--Efan
_bake_!'" She relaxed into smiles again. "Break he meant, yo' see. He'd
seen pitchers and china dolls and sich like fallin' and smashin' ter
bits, and he wus 'feared dat's wot would happen t' him."
She went on chuckling a moment, and then fell unaccountably to weeping.
The thunder crashed and the wind blew loud. It lashed the great
tulip-tree with fury. Ethan laid his face against the velvet back of the
Duchess. Aunt Jerusha wept audibly. Ethan felt rather low in his mind
himself.
"Where does this door out here lead to?" he said, feeling the need of a
diversion.
"Unner dem front stehs."
"Oh, does it go under the stairs?"
"Yes; but don' yo' go dah, honey."
"Why not?"
"It ain't a berry cheerin' kin' ob a place."
"Dirty?"
"Spec's so."
"I've noticed Venie always _runs_ past that door. It can't be 'cause
it's dirty."
"No, honey; no."
"An' Jerusha, Venie told me yesterday when grandmamma first came here
she couldn't get any servants to sleep in this house, and that was why
she had to send for Venie."
"Don' yo' min' Venus; she's misleadin'."
"Well, but I asked Mr. Hall while he was cutting the grass, and he said
_he_ wouldn't like to live here, and he looked at the house in such a
funny kind o' way."
"Huh! yo' mus'n't listen to po' w'ite trash."
"Then you'd better tell me, or I'll ask everybody."
"No, no, honey. Yo' grandma would be hoppin' mad ef yo' should git dem
iggorant pussens t' gabbin' agin."
"Then you'd just better tell me, and it'll be a secret, please, An'
Jerusha."
"Well, dey _do_ say, Massa Efan, dis yer house am hanted."
"Hanted? What's that?"
Aunt Jerusha rolled her eyes cautiously over her shoulder and lowered
her voice.
"Got ghos'es."
"Under the front stairs?" whispered Ethan, quickly withdrawing from that
proximity.
Aunt Jerusha nodded.
"Did you ever see one?"
"Law, yes; oncet or twicet."
"What was it like?"
"Like de debbil in a night-gown. Hark! Yo' heah dat?"
"Yes; oh, what was it?" Ethan was nearer Aunt Jerusha in his alarm than
he had ever ventured before.
"Dat's de bad ghos' under de stehs. De fust fall we come heah he done
groan and _gro-o-an_ like dat all de time. He been mighty still now fur
a spell. Hark! yo' heah dat?"
Ethan was horribly conscious of a hideous noise somewhere in front of
the dining-room.
"_I_ think he's in the parlor," he whispered, when he could command his
emotions sufficiently for speech.
"No, no; I used t' 'spect he was dah, but dat's jus' his being so cute,
he didn' want nobody to know he was unner de front stehs. Come into de
kitchen, Massa Efan, and I'll gib yo' a cinnamon roll."
It is useless to pretend that Ethan was a stout-hearted young gentleman.
From infancy he had been a prey to a thousand unseen terrors having for
the most part quite respectable Christian name and origin, such as the
"worm that dieth not," "the thief in the night," the "great red dragon"
of the Revelation, and "the beast with seven heads." But there are some
terrors that need no inculcating. It occurred to him now that the ghost
under the stairs was called Yaffti. Why "Yaffti" he could not have
told, or what suggested the name to him; but Yaffti was angry when
people, especially little boys, walked over his head without saying:
"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.