She longed more and more to go abroad again.
"As soon as ever you please," said Ethan.
How good he was to her! How he indulged her! How wonderful it was to be
loved by such a man! Soon they'd be off again on their travels, seeing
the beautiful Old World. Oh, Life was keeping her promises every one!
Five days after the talk about Julia came a letter from Mother Joachim,
saying that Emmie's health was quite restored, but that she was
inflexible about not seeing her sister. Mother Joachim herself thought
it best that, for a year or so, nothing more should be said of the
proposed meeting. Perhaps the girl would be willing to see her friends
before taking the black veil.
With a joy, for which Val, thinking of her sister, reproached herself,
she and Ethan had begun to lay their plans for a winter in Italy.
Suddenly, without reason as it appeared to her, his interest seemed to
falter, his good spirits to flicker out.
Although even Val would not have denied that her husband could, if put
to it, produce at any moment of the day or night the blackest charges
against the order of the world, he had not hitherto proved a depressing
person to live with. Like certain other unsanguine souls, he was a
pleasanter companion than many an arrant optimist.
This was more certainly the case when politics were a little in the
background. Val longed to see the subject banned. It seemed the one
thing that took Ethan quite out of her sphere, and kept him in some
world of scorn and indignation, at whose borders her smiling
jurisdiction stopped.
"No more politics!" she said to Tom Scherer when he appeared after
breakfast the morning after the letter had come from Mother Joachim.
"I've come to the conclusion that it's bad for the digestion to talk
bribery and corruption night after night till the small hours."
"_Your_ digestion ought to be all right. You deserted us at eleven
o'clock."
"I? Oh yes; but other people--"
"Never know when to go home?"
"It's not the people who go home that I am concerned about, if you'll
forgive my saying so. Ethan's in one of his moods this morning."
"What sort of mood?" asked Scherer, looking into the cloudless face of
the young wife. "Not very grim, to judge from its effect on yours."
"Oh, very grim indeed." As Ethan came in she waved her hand and made a
little mock bow. "You knew him yesterday as His Serene Transparency,
to-day Don Inscrutable Furioso of Grim Tartary; smokes like a chimney,
and won't say a word."
Ethan laughed and threw his cigarette into the fire.
"Morning!"
"Good-morning! I thought before I went to the office I'd come and have a
little talk with you about that piece of property out by Ely's Farm."
Val glanced through the window.
"Hi there! Jack and Jill, where you off to? Wait!"
The men looked out, and saw two small chocolate-brown infants
precipitate themselves upon Val. She sat down on the grass with the two
small creatures in front of her, and soon had them rolling about and
squealing with merriment.
"Where on earth did she find those pickaninnies?" asked Scherer.
"Offspring of Venus; little sunburned, that's all."
Val's dog-cart came to the gate, and she called out:
"Ethan, come and mind the twins while I get my hat."
He came out, and the children scuttled at sight of him.
"Do smile and reassure them," Val said, reproachfully. "There _are_
ways of looking black that darkies don't mind, but-- Oh, forgive me!"
She caught up his hand and smiled tenderly at him. "I was only making
fun, but it was stupid fun. I don't make light of your political
anxieties, but life must go on, you know, and we must smile--just a
_little_." She ran into the house and came out with hat and gloves. "Put
the babies into the cart, Ethan. They're coming for a drive."
The black children, preternaturally solemn while Ethan and Scherer
lifted them in, grinned and squealed with excitement the moment they
were landed by the side of "Miss Val."
"Miss Val" had been in wild spirits since she opened her eyes. The
reaction had set in. After those days of vague, jealously hidden pain,
she saw at hand a speedy freedom from the burden of Julia's presence.
She drove the fleet little Arab madly about the town "doing errands,"
she called out to the Halliwells and others, as she clattered by them in
the dog-cart, with her grinning little guests breaking into shrieks of
laughter at each jolt and every sudden turning of a corner. Val bought
them oranges and sticks of candy. One of her "errands" was to call at
the bank for Jerry, who, she said, alone understood how to make the
perfection of a swing. She _must_ have a swing. She was dying for a
swing. It was so silly to give up delightful things just because
children found them delightful too. And old Mr. Otway was coaxed to let
Jerry come back in the cart.
On the crooked limb of the catalpa-tree they rigged up a splendid swing,
and Jerry stayed to luncheon.
"I won't keep you after three," his old playmate said. "Ethan and I are
working at Italian from three till four. But come back this evening, and
receive the thanks of the assembled community."
After Jerry took himself off, Ethan and she went into the long room and
began their reading. Usually this hour over their books was a time that
Ethan seemed frankly to enjoy. To-day, in spite of Val's gay
good-humor, he was sometimes languid and sometimes nervously alert. He
scolded her a little for forgetting a rule he had told her the day
before.
"Yes, I'm stupid; forgive me," she said.
Again, towards the end of the hour, her attention wandered, remembering
joyously that she was going abroad again.
"You are thinking of something else," he said, looking at her almost
angrily.
"Oh, well, I won't."
"Yes, but you do. You lose half the good of learning a new language if
it doesn't teach you to concentrate. Shut out everything else," he said,
gravely. "It's the only way."
"Yes, yes, I'll be much better next time. But are you loving me to-day?"
He dropped the book like one whose strength is spent. Then he leaned
over the arm of the great red chair and kissed her, holding her close,
clinging to her.
"In spite of my sins, are you loving me more than you did yesterday?"
she said, smiling.
"Twenty-four hours more," he answered, seeming to fall in with her mood.
"All that much more?"
"All that much."
"What are we going to do to-day after lessons?" She got up and stood
before him with her finger in her book.
"Scherer and I are going to ride out to Ely's Farm a little after four,
to look at that property. You had better come, too."
"All right. But what makes you look at me so--so--" She dropped her book
and perched herself on his knee. "What are you thinking about?"
"I was thinking about this bit of Dante."
"No, no; it's wicked to tell lies. You don't smile to-day except when
you _make_ yourself. What--are--you--thinking--about?" she demanded.
But she waited in vain. He seemed to forget her question--forget her
presence. She put one arm about his neck, and lifting her other hand
doubled, she knocked at his forehead.
"Let me in--let me in," she said.
His answer was to crush her against him, and hold her so, in a silence
that was broken only by the loud, insistent ticking of the tall gilt
clock. When Val spoke again it was subdued and dreamily:
"Isn't it odd how much we sit in this huge old chair of hers whenever
we're here alone?"
"It's a friendly old chair," he answered, putting out his foot and
setting it in motion. "Ever since the far back times when I was rocked
to sleep in it, and made to forget Yaffti and all the spectres and the
hurts of childhood"--his voice was sweet and lulling--"the old chair has
been a haven."
"It was more of a judgment-seat to me," she said, and it crossed her
mind that it must be near the anniversary of the day her grandmother had
died.
She mustn't forget that date as she did all others; her whole life long
she meant to remember that day, to keep it holy with special remembrance
and with flowers, and some little deed of the kind _she_ would have
liked--done in memoriam. She lifted her head from Ethan's shoulder and
looked for the calendar. It always hung on a brass nail beside the
fireplace. It had been there three or four days ago, she was sure. She
sat thinking this, with her head turned away from her husband, and then,
while she speculated as to the calendar's whereabouts, another portion
of her brain was thinking idly:
"Why doesn't he draw me back into his arms as he always does, and say,
'Don't be such a restless creature'? He sees I'm looking for something;
why doesn't he ask for what?" And then a sudden, formless presentiment
seized her. "It must be because he knows. Why should he have guessed
just that? Had he taken the calendar away himself? Why should he? What
was the date?"
Like a blow between the eyes came the knowledge and awakening. As if it
had actually come in the form of a blow from a fist, she shut her dazed
eyes, and saw the blackness sown with stars. But for that closing of the
eyes, no muscle had she moved. She had indeed lost track of time. Her
ineradicable failing there had made forgetfulness possible; the time of
painful preoccupation about Julia had made it easy; the last days of
all-absorbing gladness had made it sure. She did the mental sum again
and again. Yes, it was September 16. To-morrow was the anniversary of
Mrs. Gano's death. Yesterday was the last day of the old life for Val.
To-day the bolt had fallen. But had it--had it? Had she not lived
through moments like this before? In those first months--yes; but then
she had taken Time and Fear by the forelock. To-day she was far behind.
It was strange to herself how all her dreads--physical shrinking and
mental anguish--focused in the fear of reading Ethan's consciousness in
his face. If blindness could only come upon her, if only she could
escape seeing the knowledge in the face she loved, she would, she knew,
escape the sharpest pang of all.
What was he thinking now of her long immobility? Why didn't he speak or
move? What need? Why should they look each other in the face? She felt
his eyes on her back, and a shiver ran between her shoulder-blades.
Those eyes of his, how she dreaded them! They pierced through to the
brain. They looked into her heart and watched it as it shrank, showing
her the while that, whatever she endured, his agony was more.
She bowed her head down over her knees. He gathered her up as if she had
been a little child, and rocked her dumbly in his arms. They sat so for
a moment, each hiding the face from the other. A loud resounding blow
upon the knocker made them start apart.
"The summons!" he thought.
And that morning in the attic came back to him when, as a child, he
glowed with excitement and pride to find the old brass knocker bearing
his own name.
Val had kept her back turned when she started up, and was standing now
before the window looking into the street. The horses were at the door.
Ethan went out. She heard him speaking with Scherer, and Scherer's voice
saying:
"Julia will be round in five minutes."
Val fled up-stairs and locked the door. She heard her husband coming up,
and listened breathless--Scherer, too! A light knock on her door as they
passed, and Ethan's voice:
"Don't be long getting ready, dear."
He never said "dear" to her before people.
"No; I won't be long," she heard herself answer.
She tore off her house-gown and hurried on her habit. She must be down
first. If she were not, she felt she couldn't go, and since he was
going--
When she got down to the gate the only person in sight was Julia,
drawing rein by the new white mounting-block at the gate. Calling to the
gardener: "Tell Mr. Gano we've gone on before," Val mounted her horse.
"I'll race you to the Maple Grove," she cried, and set off at a gallop,
Julia following.
Val reached the goal first, and rode back nearly half a mile to propose
a shorter contest. Then another and another, till the men caught them
up. They, too, seemed to have a fancy for hard riding, and when they
reached Ely's Farm the four horses were in a foam.
They went over Scherer's property while it was light, and had a
nondescript meal afterwards at the farm.
On the way home she heard her husband telling Scherer he must come back
with them and get a book Ethan had promised him in the morning. They
left Julia at her gate. When Ethan lifted Val down from her horse he
whispered:
"I may walk back with Scherer after we've had a smoke. Don't wait up for
me ... go to sleep, darling."
She clung to him an instant in the dark, and then went in-doors. Her
maid was waiting for her up-stairs.
"A bath," said her mistress; "I'm very hot and dusty."
The warm water refreshed and revived her. She put on her long blue
dressing-gown of soft unrustling silk. She saw with the old pleasure how
white and shapely her arms showed when she lifted her hands to her hair,
the wide open sleeves falling back almost to the shoulder. She uncoiled
the long brown braids, and let the hair flow loose.
"Something to read, ma'am, before I go?" asked the prim foreign maid,
placing the shaded lamp on the table by the fire and drawing up the
arm-chair.
"No; that's all."
Val sat there alone, before the fire, till twelve o'clock; then,
lighting a candle, she went to the head of the stair and listened. No
sound. He had gone back with Scherer; he must surely come soon. A sudden
noise, a sound like the shutting of the gate. She flew back to her room.
On an uncontrollable impulse she shut and locked the door, and put out
candle and lamp. Had he come that moment she would have feigned sleep.
But it was a false alarm. Presently she relit the candle, opened the
door, and stood listening. Slowly she went down-stairs, peering over the
banisters, trailing her blue draperies from room to room, her hand about
the candle-flame and her wide eyes intent.
"Looking for what? God knows. It must be Ethan I'm looking for. Why
doesn't he come? I'm to 'sleep'--to _sleep_!"
She went to the front door and opened it. The night smelt fresh and
pungent. The scent of the first falling leaves filled the air.
"Yes," she said to herself, "it's the time of the year when things
happen."
The heavy burnished knocker caught the candle gleam, and she laid her
hot forehead against the cool brass.
"He came, first, on such a night. And _she_ went away from us two years
ago to-morrow--no, it's to-day."
She came in and shut the door, but some one had entered with her. Val
stood a moment in the silent hall, quite still. The dead woman seemed to
have come back from her grave. The quiet house was full of her. Val
stood before the long room door, and almost before she realized what
she was doing, she had lifted her hand and knocked. Smiling faintly, she
went in. In that dim light it was all just as it used to be. The only
reason she couldn't see the figure in the great crimson chair was that
the high back concealed the judge and comforter sitting there.
Val set the candle down, and, for the first time since the blow had
fallen, she felt the rush of tears filling her wide strained eyes. They
blurred the dim outlines of things, but, with hands out-stretched, she
went towards the empty chair like one praying help and succor. At the
side she knelt down and laid her cheek on the arm, crying noiselessly,
remembering other days and other pains, but never before this stark
denial of all comfort. How good it had been, as a child, to feel the
light hand on her hair! Ah! the hand was lighter now. "Well, and so will
the hearts of her children be, when _they're_ dust," she said to
herself, and rose up. She looked into the parlor. Daniel Boone, his
hunters and his dogs, and before the big painting a picture etched on
the air of a wild little girl with long flying hair, dancing in the
dusk, until a fear fell on her that struck the quicksilver out of her
veins and hung her limbs with lead. On the other side of the room was
the new grand-piano that had come too late.
The Ethan of ten years ago stood in the corner with his hands on a
girl's shoulders, saying "_Promise!_" And the girl sang no more.
She went on from room to room as if still looking for that something she
had lost. Up-stairs again--into the room that had been her father's long
ago, her husband's now, and full of the impress of his spirit. His
pictures, his books--it was the one room in the house wholly, utterly
changed, in atmosphere and outward seeming. In the corner of the red
damask lounge by the fire, a little old book. She picked it up. Seneca!
She hadn't seen it since that day two years ago on the river, when he
refused to translate the passage he had marked. She would take it away
and spell out for herself those things in the marked book that had
marked the soul of the man she loved. A large empty envelope, folded
double, had fallen out. It bore the stamp of the Navy Department, and
the Washington postmark. A memorandum in pencil in Ethan's fine
handwriting: "Army contracts--fight corruption." On the other side some
verses.
Ah! he was beginning to write again. No; there was an unfamiliar name at
the end. Still, what was it that he had taken the trouble to copy?
"Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.
Think, rather--call to thought, if now you grieve a little,
The days when we had rest, oh soul, for they were long.
"Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry
I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn;
Sweat ran, and blood sprang out, and I was never sorry:
Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born.
"Now, and I muse for why, and never find the reason,
I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun.
Be still, be still, my soul--it is but for a season;
Let us endure an hour and see injustice done.
"Ay, look! high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation;
All thoughts to writhe the heart are here, and all are vain:
Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation--
Oh, why did I awake? When shall I sleep again?"[A]
She looked up and saw her husband standing at the door. With a cry she
let fall paper and candle, and fled into his arms.
"My dear, my dear!" he whispered, trying to soothe her. They stood there
locked in each other's arms while the minutes went by. At last, "Help me
to find the candle," she said, faintly, and as they both went towards
the fireless grate, groping and stooping to feel about the floor,
"Perhaps we should rather try to get used to the dark," she said; and
he, with breaking heart, caught at her, crying hoarsely:
"Val! Val! I can't bear it!"
"I'll help you, dear."
"I can't let you die."
"Isn't it strange?--everybody's said that who has loved some one. And
where are they all?"
"But you are so young." They had reached the sofa in the dark, and sat
there locked together.
"Yes, thank Heaven, we're young." She pressed her face against his wet
cheek. "Ah! don't be so terribly unhappy, dear. To die!--why, that's the
most wonderful of all."
FOOTNOTE:
[A] By permission, from _A Shropshire Lad_, by A. E. Housman.