The Open Question Part 13

"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 s.n.a.t.c.h a fearful joy in pa.s.sing 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 gra.s.s. 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 Sh.e.l.ley lost his life trying to read and sail a boat at the same time."

Who was this Sh.e.l.ley 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 sh.e.l.l, 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 n.o.body 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 banis.h.i.+ng the kitten. So "d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 polis.h.i.+ng 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!"