It was a little over a year after this that Mrs. Gano's life was
despaired of.
"A complication of troubles, no one of them very serious, but all
together, and at her age--"
The doctor completed the sentence with a gesture.
The next day Ethan stood with his cousins at the bedside.
"I did not send for you," was Mrs. Gano's greeting.
"No; Val did," volunteered Emmie, who had not been told the result of
the doctor's consultation.
"_Val_"--the sick woman raised her head--"you take a great deal upon
yourself."
She sank back exhausted. Val could not read in Ethan's eyes that he had
abandoned hope. But the girl's heart was full of dread. She went softly
out of the room.
"Oh, grandma, you've hurt her feelings," said Emmie, gently.
"Nonsense!"
"I saw tears in her eyes. Think of Val crying!"
"It's no great affair that one should cry now and then. Perhaps it's
just as well that you've come, after all." She fixed a far from
hospitable look upon her grandson. "I was about to write you. Leave us
awhile, Emmeline." She closed her eyes as the girl went out, as if to
summon strength. "I don't approve of the tone of your last letter to
Val."
Ethan stared.
"Oh, she reads me parts still. She reads me a great deal. The tone of
the later ones, especially the last--"
She shook her head with a weak, slow movement.
"I am sorry you think--"
"We haven't time to waste being sorry; let us be different." With sudden
energy she pulled out one page of a letter from under her pillow. "I
haven't eyesight to read your shocking writing, my dear--"
"No, no; don't try. I remember what you mean. I won't make fun of the
Churchman in politics any more--not in my letters. I apologize to the
bishop."
"Oh, _that_"--she smiled--"that was rather amusing, though not in the
best taste. No; what I mean was on the last page. Read from 'whom the
gods love.'"
"Do you mean this quotation?"
"Yes."
"'Life, though a good to men on the whole, is a doubtful good to many,
and to some not a good at all.' Is that it?"
"Yes. What's the rest?"
"'To my thought it is a source of constant mental distortion to make the
denial of this a part of religion--to go on pretending things are better
than they are. To me early death takes the aspect of salvation.'"
"Now I ask you, Can you find nothing better than that to say to a girl?"
"It was not I who found it."
"You say it's George Eliot. Well, she had too much sense to present that
view to a young girl. She put it in a diary. If you've nothing better to
put into yours, so much the worse for you. Don't you know there are two
ways of interpreting 'whom the gods love die young'?"
"Yes"--he smiled--"'young' when they die at eighty." And he looked at
the living commentary.
"Very well; it's a view to keep in mind. But it's not only occasional
things like that that I deprecate in your letters; the letters
themselves should cease."
"Really." He drew himself up and returned her direct look, but the
wasted face and sunken eyes struck compunction to his heart. "Very
well," he said, soothingly.
"It's not very well at all, but very ill, that you should try to waive
the subject."
"Waive it?"
"Yes. You think I'm dying, and you won't oppose me. I'm not dying, and I
mean to see Val through this before I _do_ die."
"Through what?"
"Through her foolish befogment about you. I had a long talk with Harry
Wilbur last week. He has behaved well. _You_--" She paused, as if trying
to pluck out the heart of his mystery; then, abandoning the attempt: "I
want you to promise me before you leave this room that you'll go away by
the next train, and that you won't see Val, or write to her, till one or
other of you is safely and suitably married."
He had a moment's temptation to pacify her at all costs, but as he
looked into the old face he felt that a degradation would cling to him
if he played falsely with a spirit as honest and courageous as this. She
wasn't a woman one could lie to comfortably.
"I can't promise you that," he said, after a struggle.
"Why not?"
"Oh, the old reason," he answered, with a look of weary pain.
"What is that?"
She craned her head forward.
"You have to ask?"
"I have to ask."
"I love her."
"And don't you know--" Her loyalty to Val stopped her. "Why don't you
tell her?"
"I have."
"Then, why aren't you-- What's the trouble?"
"What's the trouble?" he echoed.
"Yes. You surely aren't waiting for me to go?"
"No, no," he said, hastily, feeling his fears for the moment dislodged
and feebly flying like a flock of bats and owls before the daylight in
the brave old eyes. "No, no; you are not the barrier."
"What then?"
"I suppose, primarily, it's Uncle John. He left us a legacy."
"John!"
A sudden mist of weakness rose before her like a veil.
"Yes."
Ethan turned away, and paced the dim room from the bedside to the
fireplace, back and forth. It came over the sick woman that it was just
so John had walked and talked about this life he lacked the energy to
live. How like him Ethan was growing in air and manner! It was as if
John had got up out of his grave to walk the old track in the old
restless fashion. What was it he was saying about "the wreck of creeds"?
"--the mere expediency of the conventions right and wrong, and yet man's
hopeless struggle to be rid of the phantom Duty. If you pass the
churches by, she confronts you in the schools, in the laboratory,
follows you in the streets, dogs you day and night, the 'implacable
huntress.' We may free ourselves from all superstitions but Duty. She,
in one guise or another, is ever at the heels of men."
"You wouldn't be a Gano if you didn't feel so," she said, wondering
vaguely if she had dreamed Ethan's coming and John's going.
Which was it, walking the worn and faded track on Valeria's old blue
Brussels?
"Exactly. So Uncle John said."
Ah, then it was Ethan!
"What was it John said?"
She drew herself up, and shook off the veil of faintness.
"Several unforgettable things about man's first duty to the race--about
not inflicting upon others the burdens Val and I must bear."
"Burdens!" (Ah, she remembered now what they had been talking about.)
"What burden, I'd like to know, does Val bear that you can't lift?"
"Her father's."
"Humph! And you?"
"She and I are of one blood. We carry a double share."
"And let me tell you"--she sat up straight in the great bed--"a double
share of Gano is no bad addition to the world's brew."
"Did you ever say that to Uncle John?"
"Good Heaven! To hear you talk, a body'd think you had invented the law
of heredity--you and your uncle John."
"God forbid!"
"Well, God _has_ forbid, and let that content you. He is quite capable
of looking after His own world."
Ethan's faint head-shake and his smile seemed to infuriate her.
"My good soul, you take too much responsibility. It doesn't lie with you
to refashion the world. God's universe has been good enough for a great
many good people."
"That it has been good enough for you doesn't cover the question," he
said, brutally, adding in haste, "even if you didn't deceive yourself.
It is not, as things are, good enough for all. But Uncle John was right:
it would be a better place to live in if people hesitated to perpetuate
disease."
"Perpetuate disease! What folly you talk! Don't you see that your
improved new modes of living breed new diseases? If you have not the
cholera of my youth, you have the Bright's disease and the influenza
that we knew nothing of. Disease is part of the plan."
"What an awful doctrine!"
"Not at all. _I_ can't be sure that it wouldn't leave the world poorer
if disease were got rid of. I'm not, like you, ready to arraign the
Everlasting." (Val opened the door softly, came in, and stood at the
foot of the bed.) "To my finite mind, unsearchable are His judgments,
and His ways past finding out. I only know that they are just, and that
I am the work of His hand."
"I envy you your faith."
"No, you don't. You think yourself superior to it, and what's the
result? You walk in darkness."
"Not altogether in darkness." He looked across at the girl.
"Yes, in darkness and in fear. Not the fear of God--that's tonic--but in
the fear of pain. Oh, I've watched this phase of modern life. It's been
coming, coming for years. The world to-day is crushed and whining under
a load of sentimentality. People presently will be afraid to move, lest
they do or receive some hurt."
"All people don't wear your armor."
"There is no armor but God," she said, in a clear voice. "'We are
troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in
despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.'"
He bent and kissed her hand. She withdrew it and laid it on his head,
smoothing the thick, dark hair.
"You carry one Gano burden that I pity you for: you think too much about
life."
"Ah, and it doesn't bear being thought about?"
"But Val will help you there," she went on, ignoring the question. "All
she asks is the wages of going on." She reached out a hand to the girl,
who came and stood by her cousin. "Val hasn't the letter, but she has
the spirit. Remember, you two, when you come in the modern way to pick
flaws in the Faith, that if I wore stout armor, as you say, it was not
of this world's forging. Remember, that I told you I could not have
lived the half--no, nor the quarter part of my long life, if I had not
been 'persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor
height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us
from the love of God.'" She closed her eyes. "Now go and leave me, you
two. I am tired."
Treading softly, Ethan went out of the room. Val watched beside her till
the night-nurse came.
The next morning Mrs. Gano sent for the clergyman (through Emmie, saying
nothing to the others), and took the Communion.
"It's a habit of mine," she told Ethan afterwards. "I always commune
several times a year."
"Only at Easter and Christmas," Val told him privately, afterwards.
"But she is angry if we seem to notice anything unusual."
About four o'clock Emmie, who did not appreciate the gravity of the
situation, came in from visiting a young girl who was very ill--not
expected to live.
"Oh, grandma, you should have seen her! so gentle and so resigned;
saying good-bye to all her friends." Emmie broke down.
"H'm! I consider that an unnecessary strain on the feelings."
"Oh no," remonstrated Emmie; "it was beautiful! She prayed for us all."
"She might do that without making a scene."
"Oh, grandma, you don't realize what it was like. I never saw any one so
ready for the other life as Ada Brown."
"Oh yes, you have. The best 'getting ready' isn't done on death-beds."
"You're so unsympathetic," murmured the girl.
"Yes, I've hated scenes all my life; but death-bed scenes I consider
indecent."
"_Oh!_" Emmie got up and, with deeply injured looks, prepared to
withdraw.
"If you haven't done your best, it's too late when you're dying to try
to mend things. If you _have_ done your best, there's no more to be
said."
And no more _was_ said for several hours. She lay quite peacefully, took
the half-hourly restoratives from Val, but was visibly weaker on each
occasion. Ethan went out and sent for the doctor. He came back in time
to lift the half-unconscious form up in his arms, while Val held a glass
to the pale lips.
"Enough," she whispered; "lay me down." And it was done. She opened her
eyes and faintly pressed Val's hand. "Good girl," she said.
A slight spasm passed over her face. She turned her head away, clutched
the sheet, and, with what seemed a superhuman effort, drew it over her
face. Ethan put out his hand to take it away, but Val arrested him.
"Don't! don't! She would never let any one see when she suffered." The
girl fell sobbing at the bedside.
Some time after, Val drew the linen down. The suffering was over, so was
the long life.
Venus and the "new" servant had taken turns to sit through the day in
the long room, where the body lay. Ethan was to watch through the night,
but Val had insisted that she should be there from ten till midnight
while Ethan slept, before his watch began. He opposed her plan, but gave
way at last and went to lie down--not to sleep. Just before twelve
o'clock he came out of his room, down over the head of his old enemy
Yaffti, and stopped outside the long room door. Again a remembrance of
his childhood's awe, and the queer sense that he ought, in spite of all,
to knock to-night before going in. He turned the knob and entered
softly.
The long, straight outlines of the coffin set high upon a bier, the
candles burning at the head, and in the shadow at the coffin's side a
deeper shadow on the floor. As his eyes became accustomed to the light,
he saw it was his cousin crouching there on her knees, with bowed head
and hands folded straight before her, palm to palm. He went forward and
tried to lift her.
"No, let me alone; I--I want to pray."
"To pray, Val?"
She bowed her white face.
"Not to God--I don't know about God--but there's some one else now out
in the vague, and I--I have need of her."
Her face drooped out of sight, and the moments passed. The motionless
figure with the folded palms might have been a mortuary marble on an
ancient tomb, so rigid was it, so uninformed by life. Ethan sat at the
coffin's foot and watched the candles flare.
What if this shock and jar were to send Val back to the faith of her
fathers? What was it in its lesser effect upon himself? What was it
working in him? He looked at the long, dim outlines. Death! For the
girl, too, with her joy of life, her greed of consciousness, and for
him, this hour would come, of rigid quiet, and of watchers in the
candle-light. He shivered involuntarily, glancing at the kneeling
figure. Death! How much he had thought about it, and how little he had
seen. Here it was beside him in a narrow box. He turned away his eyes,
seized upon afresh by its horror and its fascination. That moment of
dissolution, what had it been like? Even the brave old woman had covered
up her face. He peered a moment into the pit, realizing for that instant
the wrenching away of life's supports, the plunge, the sinking to the
bottom. With an effort he reminded himself of the peace, too, awaiting
all down there, and its being the only possible solution to the riddle
of the world. But the end--the end! Earthquake and avalanche it is, for
the one who lies a-dying; fire and flood and shock of battle, the true
end of the world. For us the lamp of the sun was lit on the day of our
birth, for us the stars will be snuffed out and chaos come again when we
lie down to die.
Had it been like that with her--this dead woman at his elbow? He stood
up; cautiously he came to the coffin's head, with parted lips, like one
about to put an eager question. He laid back the white sheet. At sight
of the tranquil features his own tense look relaxed. Ah, no; for that
steadfast spirit the end had brought no terror, or if it had, the quiet
face kept triumphantly its secret. A movement down in the shadow, and
Val lifted her head, but not as high as the coffin.
"Ethan!"--she clutched his hand--"don't you feel how alive she is? Hush!
in a moment she will speak. I've asked her for a sign."
They waited--in that silence that wraps the world. Then Val stood up,
and gave a cry as she beheld the face for the first time since the
"laying out." She caught up the candle, and held up the light before the
dead, as she had held it before the living woman on that evening long
ago, when Ethan saw her first.
"Oh, Ethan, Ethan," said the girl, "_she's smiling_! That's her answer."
They had come back from the burial, and for the first time in their
lives Val and Emmie were in the old house without that constant presence
that had come to seem as much a part of the Fort as its very walls.
Ethan was still there. Mrs. Otway had come to be with them through those
first days; but since the dead body had been carried out of the house
loneliness was lodged there like a bailiff, violating the sanctity and
blessedness of home.
Ethan found Val in the long room the next evening, sitting on the floor
crying, with head against the big empty chair.
"Even you can't make the awful loneliness go away," she said. "I must
wait awhile before I can think about taking up life."
The next day she said to him: "You must go away now, and you must come
back for me."
"You still think it possible?"
"For you to go away?"
"For me to come back."
"Possible? Inevitable!" She smiled up at him with an air of tender
mockery. "No escape from _me_. But never forget"--she was grave enough
now--"we may escape paying the penalty--people do."
He studied her a moment. No; she was thinking only of the natural
"chance." No idea of trying to control it had come her way. "Nor could
she comprehend," he thought, "how, even if I am wrong in my inveterate
mistrust, or if science should to-morrow carry us so far that we should
be demonstrably beyond the reach of danger--she could not realize that
no power on earth or in the heavens could make us fully credit our
security, could carry us beyond the reach of _fear_. Imagination is, by
so much, mightier than reason. Trust imagination to keep the fear
alive, to work without ceasing, by day and by night, subtly to destroy
the fabric of our lives."
But even when the strong contagion of his fear had reached and mastered
her a moment, it was fear with another face.
"I see plainly"--she laid her hands on his shoulders--"you think that it
will mend matters if you have the treachery to go the long journey by
yourself, and leave me alone in the world. But it would only mean that
we should die apart, and now, when we might have died later and
together, and--and"--she laid her face against him--"after great joy."
He stroked her hair with an unsteady hand. "Look at me!" she cried on a
sudden, lifting up her face. "You aren't afraid? Don't you see that I'd
keep my word?"
"Yes, you'd keep your word."
In his inmost heart it would have helped him at that moment to have
found any softness of shrinking there.
"Then you'll come when I send--you'll come and take me away?"
Was it fancy, or had she lightly stressed the "me"? He thought of how he
had come first of all and taken John Gano to the South to die; how he
had returned to follow his grandmother to her long home. He had a sudden
vision of himself in the guise of Death. "Each time I come," he thought,
"I see some one of this house off on his last journey. Soon little Emmie
will be left alone."
But Emmie was not left to the last, and Ethan, though he never knew it,
was responsible for her, too, turning her back upon the Fort--upon the
world.
The effect of Mrs. Gano's death on a clinging and dependent nature like
Emmie's was painfully apparent. Val's new-born sense of tender
guardianship over her younger sister was certainly not weakened by the
younger girl's confession, after he went away, of her passion for Ethan.
"I always thought it might come right for me," she said, "till--till I
saw the look on his face when he bade you good-bye. When will you be
married, Val?"
"I don't know, dear."
"Some time during this year?"
"I should think so."
The younger girl bowed a meek head, and turned to her faith as a refuge,
or, as Ethan would have said, an opiate. But the old helps seemed to
have lost somewhat of their efficacy. She began to go to mass, and one
day sought an interview with the Roman Catholic priest. A few months
afterwards she was received into the Roman Church.
Val would not leave her sister while she was going through these phases,
and forbade Ethan to come till she should send for him.
But Mrs. Gano had not been in her grave a year when Emmie herself made
the final move that broke up the old home. How much religious fervor had
to do with it, how much a sense of unfitness for the battle of life, how
much a feeling in the gentle heart that she was delaying Val's
happiness, no one ever knew. She bade her sister good-bye with many
tears, turned her back upon the Fort, and entered the first year of her
novitiate at the Convent of the Sacred Heart.
A week later, in early August, Val was married very quietly to her
cousin, in the Church of St. Thomas. "But the real marriage was that
evening on the river when we propitiated the Fates," she whispered, as
they came down the church steps.