The Open Question Part 120

"I wus lef' in chawge, sah."

"Well, you've left the veranda door open!"

She stopped rubbing her knees and wiped her eyes.

"Dat do' sutny am open, sah. I wanted--t' see de las' ob yer. Dis w'ere me an' maw done spy out fo' yo' dat firs' time. Ole Mis' G'no--_she_ didn' min' me an' maw bein' yere."

"You saw me come back?"

"Ya.s.s, sah." Then, as if to palliate the crime of the open door: "Mebbe a long time fo' I see yo' comin' in agin."

"Yes," he said, "it's likely to be a long time," and his slow look went round the place, shying at the pavilion.

Venus seemed to think it inc.u.mbent upon her to hold up her end of the conversation.

"Huh! Can't say fo' sho' why I'm carryin' on like dis yere." She mopped her eyes. "Miss Val gone away laffin' fit to kill."

"Yes, she takes it better than we do. Good-bye, Venus."

"Goo'-bye, sah. Trufe is, sah, Miss Val mighty sot on seein' de worl'.

Goo'-bye, goo'-bye!"

She waved her ap.r.o.n till he was out of sight.

"They've rung the 'all aboard' bell twice!" Val called excitedly from the deck of the steamer as Ethan appeared at the landing.

He gladly cut his good-byes short, with an eye on the figure up there against the sky, in dull blue tweed, belted in with white wash-leather.

She had shown him one morning, nearly a year ago, how neatly that same white leather strip fitted over the old Russian belt that she had clung to until he got her the one of turquoises.

"Of course," she had said that day in Paris, laughing and showing her white teeth, "if I were a clumpy lady now--if I hadn't such a nice little waist, I couldn't wear two belts, and I could never wear white at all! So mind you appreciate me."

It was that day he had gone and ordered the turquoise girdle. Was she wearing it now? Of course. Absurd child! she never dressed without it.

He glanced up at her in the midst of the handshaking, seeing neither Wilbur nor Scherer nor Julia, but a wind-blown figure above him on the brow of Plymouth Hill, looking out to the future. And to-day? The same questioning eyes, shoulders well set back, the little head held high--she was still looking the world in the face; it would be defiance but for the smile.

As the paddle churned the water there was a chorus of good-bying and hurrahing. The whistle shrieked--the steamer lumbered fussily down-stream.

"Why don't you wave, too?" said Val, excitedly. "Is that old book under your arm what you went back for? Why is your other hand full of leaves?"

"I can't imagine why." He opened his fingers and let the scarlet barberries and the small crisp leaves fall into the river.

The faces in the crowd were growing dim, but still she waved her handkerchief.

"You remember that man you once told me about?" she said.

"What man?" He looked dreamily back at the throng as though expecting to find him there.

"Don't you remember he was at play when the Roman guard came to carry him to his execution? I should like to call back to my friends as he did: 'Bear witness when I am dead that I had the better of the game!'"

Ethan's prophecy proved true. Val loved the place at Oakland, and all the walks and drives about. She delighted in San Francisco, and she ransacked Chinatown with unabated curiosity.

"You've never told me what you think of _Yaffti_," Ethan said to her some days after their arrival.

"_Yaffti?_"

"My sailboat."

"Oh, I haven't encountered _Yaffti_ as yet."

He presently realized that she had never been down to the beach since she came. Instinctively he avoided suggesting it again. He would go off for a sail sometimes himself with his man, Sam Cornish, an old sailor who had been with him years before on his yacht. But Val was ingenious in inventing inland outings. _Yaffti_ for the most part was tethered fast in the little cove, and Sam smoked endless pipes on the pier.

But Val made the old sailor's acquaintance nevertheless, and delighted in him. One day, in an encounter down at the stables, Sam made bold to remonstrate with her upon her "fear o' the sea."

"'Tain't wot I expected by the look o' yer, mum."

She laughed a little nervously, and went up the drive to meet Ethan.

"What's Sam being saying?" he said, conscious of the faint trace of agitation in her face.

"Sam? Oh, nothing! Sam and I are great friends." Restless under her husband's continued scrutiny, she asked: "How long have you known Sam?"

"Oh, seven or eight years, I should think."

"Well, he likes me best, anyhow," she laughed.

"I dare say," said Ethan, adopting her note; "all ignorant persons do."

"Yes, it's true!" She stopped a moment. "Now, why is that, do you suppose?" she said, with the candid air of a scientific investigator.

"Merely because you have the _beau role_ to play," he said, still smiling. "You help them to believe in happiness. I'm apt to verify their worst suspicions."

Ethan left his wife very little alone, and it was strange and pitiful to him--a daily mockery of the human lot--that they should be so often happy, and in spirit closer together in these hours, than they had ever been in their lives. They clung to each other like two lost children, and the days went by in a dream.

They had had three weeks of quite perfect weather. To-day, for the first time since their coming, the sky lowered, the air was heavy. Still, the sun showed his dazzling Californian face at intervals, and Ethan watched the weather signs while he dressed, his heart secretly set upon going off, by-and-by, with _Yaffti_ and Sam for a sail. He must find out discreetly how Val was going to spend the morning.

"What's for to-day?" he said to her at breakfast.

"I've a beautiful plan if the weather behaves," she answered.

They stood at the door of the summer-house after breakfast. Val would leave him every now and then, go to the lattice-window that looked out to sea, and come back with the latest Signal Service report. Her version was so uniformly favorable that Ethan laughed at last.

"You're like an old night-watchman!"

"I'm not a bit like an old night-watchman."

"Yes, yes," he insisted. "Weren't you told as a child how they used to go crying the hour under the windows in Baltimore, 'Eleven o'clock, and all's well!' 'Midnight, and all's well'?"

"Very nice of them, I'm sure; and if the family watchman says 'All's well' after luncheon, you are to take me to China."