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 beatitude, 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 damnation of
hell?'"
"Because our Saviour distinctly says it of _that_ generation--centuries
ago--of rebellious and unbelieving Jews."
"Oh-h!" He was only half reassured.
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 gnashing--"
"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 hell, 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 God."
"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
fashion 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 Hellespont,
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 Shelley?" 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 _être_ and _avoir_; but grandfather says--"
"I notice you use that word 'awfully' a great deal. Do you know what it
means?"
Ethan preserved an embarrassed 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 twang, 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 ejaculated. "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 Duchess 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 Duchess 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 passed 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-glass 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 glass stopper in; they can't breathe."
In spite of his entreating, she took out the stopper, and put the end of
her lace scarf over the opening.
"You won't take it away from me?"
"No, no," she said, gently leading him back to the front porch,
repeating as she went:
"'The shooting stars attend thee,
And the elves also,
Whose little eyes glow
Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.'"
"It isn't their little eyes that glow; it's their little tails," said
Ethan, with his nose flattened against the camphor-bottle.
When they got near the porch, the prudent young gentleman took off his
coat, and wrapped the bottle from the too inquiring gaze of his
grandmother. Aunt Valeria was in a kind of dream, and didn't seem to
notice.
"What a perfect evening!" she half whispered, looking up through the
trees.
"Good-night," said Ethan to his grandmother, trying to get through the
ceremony and hold his coat round the bottle on Aunt Valeria's arm at the
same time.
"Forty-eight years to-day," she went on to her mother, "since Shelley's
body was burned on the sands at Viareggio."
"Ah, yes," returned the other, speaking very gently. "Good-night,
child."
"What! Is he _dead_?" said Ethan, feeling a double shock.
"Yes, dear; he's dead."
And he and Aunt Valeria went up-stairs in the dark.
"You never told me," said the child, when they had passed Yaffti in
safety. "I s'pose Byron's all right," he added, remembering allusions to
that person's physical prowess.
"Byron's dead, too," said Aunt Valeria, sadly, "and Keats--poor Keats!"
"All _dead_!"
They had been referred to as if they lived in the next street. If it had
been Shelley who had come to make them a visit, it would have seemed as
natural--more natural than the apparition of Tom Rockingham or the
objectionable Uncle Elijah.
"I'll get a piece of net to put over the bottle while you undress," said
Aunt Valeria.
When she came back Ethan was in bed.
"What relation was Shelley to me?" he asked, welcoming the
camphor-bottle to his arms.
"Relation? None."
"Oh-h!"
These things were obscure. The Tallmadges, for instance, weren't related
to Grandmamma Gano, so she had said with emphasis.
"Then what relation was Shelley to _you_?"
"No relation at all, dear. He was an English poet."
"You mean he wasn't even born in America?"
Ethan sat up straight in his bed.
"He was born far away in England," said Aunt Valeria, dreamily.
"An' dead an' _burnt_?"
"Yes."
"And never was no relation to _any_ of us?"
"No."
"Oh-h!"
He lay back on his pillow, conscious of a new loneliness--of being
bereft of something he had counted his. Yes; it was just as if some one
belonging to him had died.
After Aunt Valeria had told him why they had burned Shelley's body, and
even after she had repeated all his favorite poems, a sense of loss
remained.
She thought he was asleep when she kissed him good-night. But he stirred
and gave a little sigh.
"Well, I'm glad I've got my fireflies, anyhow," he murmured.
His leave-taking next morning was extremely harrowing to his own
feelings, however austerely the rest took it. He wept freely after
breakfast down under the barberry-bush, but he promised himself he would
get it all done down there in the blessed privacy of the wilderness, and
not cry another tear after he got back to the house. He had made a tour
the moment he was dressed, saying good-bye to everything. Now there was
nothing left but An' Jerusha and the family. Uncle Elijah might come any
minute. He dried his eyes, and crept back through the rank undergrowth
to the terrace, went heavily up the two flights of stone steps, saying
good-bye again to the flag lilies and the crooked catalpa and the
tulip-tree, and so on sedately round the house to the kitchen. On his
appearance, An' Jerusha rushed towards him with wide-spread, motherly
arms, but observing his involuntary recoil, she stood still, looking at
him with unlessened affection.
"Good-bye, An' Jerusha," he said, holding her hand tight in both his
own.
"Good-bye, honey. Be suah you come agin soon."
"Yes, I mean to; and thank you for all the songs and the cinnamon
rolls."
"Law, honey! jes' listen to de chile."
She turned away to Venie with an attempt at a chuckle, but the tears had
started down her cheeks.
"Good-bye."
Ethan shook hands with the smiling Venus.
"Maw and me done put yo' in a Johnny-cake," she said, an outsider might
have thought enigmatically.
"Thank you," said Ethan, tremulously--"thank you both, awfully."
"Dat's de do'-bell, an' Massa Efan's knocker," said Aunt Jerusha,
sniffing violently. "You go, Venus; I ain't 'spectabel."
"Oh, it's my uncle," said Ethan, rather relieved at the interruption;
and he hurried after Venus, feeling, however, deeply dissatisfied with
his leave-taking of An' Jerusha.
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, brushing 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
passer-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 apron up to her eyes. Nobody 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 grasses, 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 passed, 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?"