The Open Question Part 69

He was suddenly alert, anxious.

"No, no; I don't think it's his fault. He, too, looks upon her as a child. But it would be better if he went away."

"Ah! Ah, indeed; I wish I'd realized. We'll get him away as soon as possible."

His air of sudden energy seemed perhaps over-anxious.

"Don't do anything to excite suspicion. He is quite ready to go away with you at the end of the week."

"Where is he now?" demanded her son.

"In the parlor with Val."

They came down-stairs together, Mrs. Gano going back to Emmie. Her son laid his hand on the parlor door with something both anxious and inflexible in his manner. It might appear that the little scene on the other side was easily interrupted by a less extravagant expenditure of energy. So little may we know the people we spend our lives with, that the not un.o.bservant old woman at the opposite door thought there was no more in her son's mind than in her own--a wish to save Val the pain of an unrequited devotion.

The talk with Ethan to which Mrs. Gano had just referred had taken place less than an hour before. Although it had been a most discreet interchange, beginning and ending with John Gano, it had left the young man in a state of acute discomfort and vague rage at fate. Why had he not gone away before? Why should his lingering be punished by this awful infliction of the care of his uncle, or at best his escort hundreds of miles away, and his establishment in Georgia? It was too much. He had been ready to deal generously with these queer relations in the matter of money. But to refuse his help to keep a whole roof over their heads, and then calmly to demand this of him! It made him laugh, but it made him angry too. He cursed his folly and inertia, as he called it, in staying on. Why, he might have been at Tuxedo at this moment! He had wasted enough time here to have gone to the Riviera. But as he thought of the dozens of things he might have done, a sharp realization came to him of the inner dulness of these outwardly glittering ways of killing time. He had tried them all; he knew them for what they were worth.

Whether work or play, they were just so many devices for shortening the spun-out tale of days. He knew of old where such thoughts would lead him. He walked up and down from Daniel Boone to the mirror, glowering out from time to time at the rain. Beast of a day! Where was everybody?

Suddenly he opened the door. Val started back.

"Oh--a--oh!" she said, confused. "I was just coming to see if--"

She stopped, obviously at a loss.

"And I was just wondering where you were all this time."

She came in smiling and flus.h.i.+ng, and shut the door.

"What an awful day!" he said, drawing up a chair for her to the neglected fire.

"Is it?" she inquired, blandly.

"_Is_ it?"

He walked to the window.

"I hadn't noticed." She looked after him and beyond him, through the blurred window-panes. "Yes, it is rather rainy and blowy."

"Hardly four o'clock, and dark as a wolf's mouth."

"Yes, the sun sets early these days. I love the long evenings."

She poked the low-burned fire till a feeble flame sprang up. He turned and looked at her through the twilight.

"What do you do, little cousin, when you want to kill time?"

She glanced over her shoulder with sudden gravity, shovel in hand.

"Do you know, I think to 'kill time' is the most hideous, murderous phrase in the language. I wish you wouldn't use it."

"What do you propose as a subst.i.tute?"

"Just remembering how little time there is for all there is to do with it." (No coal left in the scuttle--she must go and tell Venie.)

"Ah, yes," Ethan said, coming back and sitting down. "But suppose you haven't got a mission? Suppose n.o.body and nothing has any particular need of you?"

"Oh, I wasn't thinking of missions and needs. I was just thinking of how much there was to see and--to--to feel--to _find out about_! Enough to last a million years, and we aren't given (in this life) a hundred."

Gloom settled down upon her face. "I think it's simply awful that we're allowed so little time. Even elephants and ravens are better off."

He looked into her woe-begone countenance, and began to shake with laughter.

"Well, well, this _is_ the other side of the s.h.i.+eld."

Val was disconcerted at his mirth.

"I'm glad to see you so cheerful about it," she said. "_I_ think it's simply tragic."

"You observe that even such optimism as yours has its dark side too."

"Dark? Yes, coal-black, but never dull." She spoke with great solemnity.

"No matter what comes, it can't help being frantically interesting."

"How can you be sure of that? You may be--"

He stopped.

"How can I be sure? Why, just because, don't you see, it will be happening to _me_. That makes it quite new--makes it tremendous." She studied the dark enigmatic face, and her radiance paled a trifle. "You said so yourself the other night."

"_I_ said so?"

"Don't you remember?--about everybody being different."

"Different? Yes."

"Oh, that made me so happy." She bent towards him, beaming again. "I so love thinking that none of the dull old rules hold for me--that I'm the first one of this sort. What did for other people won't do for me--what happened to them needn't make me afraid. Oh, it's splendid to think it's all new and different because of me!"

She pressed her hands together, and her face, yes, it was like a lamp in the gathering gloom.

"I wonder what you'll do with your life?" said the man, with something very tender in the low voice.

"Do with it? I shall love it so, it will _have_ to be good to me. I shall sing, and I shall travel--go everywhere, do everything. I mustn't miss a single thing--oh, dear no! not a single, single thing." Silence a moment, and then, "There's just one thought troubles me," she said.

"Ah yes, there's always one--when there aren't more."

"Less time than a silly old elephant's got--and here my father's had to put off starting till the spring. I hope I shall be able to wait all that time for him; but sometimes I feel as if I shouldn't."

"Ah, but your promise to me!"

"What was it I promised, cousin Ethan?"