The Open Question Part 74

"Ah! I have ceased to be troubled at minor differences of creed; but when we are young, we are less--catholic," she smiled, and then grew grave. "I hope you will never say anything to unsettle the faith of the little girls."

"Oh, I shouldn't dream-- But Val has not been confirmed, I understand."

"No; I don't believe any longer in pressing these things."

"She would have required pressing?"

"She has not developed any great concern about spiritual matters. And yet, as a child, she was much occupied about religion. Not as you and Emmie were. With Val it was all the wrong way up."

"Wrong way--"

Mrs. Gano nodded, reflectively.

"Her interest in the Bible seemed founded upon the large opportunity it gave her for the exercise of rank unbelief. I was always hoping to overcome the tendency. But"--she shook her head--"if, as a treat, I allowed her to choose what portion of the Scripture should be read aloud, it was always the Revelation."

"Oh, I don't think that so depraved."

"Neither did I, till one Sunday, as I got to the words, 'And I, John, saw,' I was arrested by a movement from the child sitting at my feet. I looked down and saw the small face puckered with the concentrated essence of suspicion. 'Who saw it 'sides John?' she demanded. And that, briefly, has been her att.i.tude ever since. I lament it, but I don't talk to her about it any more. The one Christian tenet that I am satisfied Val holds is the doctrine of the Resurrection. Strange--strange! Now, Emmie is like all the rest of the Ganos."

Ethan nodded. "Yes, Val is a stranger among us. Poor Val!"

Emmie was certainly a vision of innocent loveliness, as she went up to the chancel that Easter morning, to be received into the communion of the faithful. There was something poetic, something not wholly of this world, in her fragile beauty, her rapt and lighted look. Ethan recognized in the sweet face--never so unclouded as to-day--the subtle ecstasy of the devotee. Something in him stirred painfully, regretfully, answering to it with a sense of unwilling sympathy, of kins.h.i.+p that would not be denied. People in the church that day whispered to each other:

"Emmie Gano and her cousin are more alike than most brothers and sisters are."

Very different was the mutinous face of the elder girl, sitting beside Ethan in her mourning, looking neither at bishop nor white-robed brides of the Church, but with unreconciled, tear-filled eyes at the white cross, in memory of her father, that hung among the Easter decorations in the chancel. The wreath upon the lectern, that all the town knew to be the annual "In memoriam" to that Valeria Gano who had been in her grave these twenty years--for that, only Ethan of the dead woman's kindred had eyes and tender remembering.

"Father's cross looked very beautiful," Emmie said, in a hushed voice, to her grandmother that afternoon.

Mrs. Gano inclined her head.

"I am glad we chose calla lilies; he loved them," murmured Emmie.

"He didn't love to hear them called calla lilies," said Val, without a particle of feeling in her voice.

"Yes," said Emmie, "I mean those great--"

"He would be very angry to hear you call them lilies."

"Angry?" Mrs. Gano looked up.

"Yes, angry," said Val. "Callas are not liliaceae, they are araceae, and belong to the Jack-in-the-pulpit family. If he hears us, he'll hate to think we've forgotten so soon." Her defiant eyes suddenly filled up. "He taught us not to be so ignorant as to call them lilies, just as he taught us not to say 'wisteria.'"

"What are you to say, then?" asked Ethan.

"Wistaria."

"Not really?"

"Yes, it _is_ wistaria, and we must all _say_ wistaria, because he told us to, and because it's named after General Wistar."

"Why have you put these fine linen doilies on the arms of the chairs?"

asked Mrs. Gano.

"Because the arms are covered with velvet," Val answered, without thinking, and then shot a shy look at Ethan.

"Velvet? Of course. What then?"

Val looked in her lap and said, mendaciously:

"I don't like velvet arms. Please let the doilies stay."

Mrs. Gano was satisfied in her own mind that Val was ashamed of the condition of the ancient covering. The difficulty plainly was that it _had_ been velvet. She forbore to pursue the question before her grandson.

The days went on; Ethan refused to count them.

One late afternoon a deluge of rain brought down a part of the ceiling in the old red room that had been John Gano's. Ethan took his courage in both hands, and described to Mrs. Gano, in forcible terms, the extent of the damage and the danger of leaving the roof as it was.

"I don't propose to leave it as it is."

He studied her.

"Do you remember telling me when I was a little chap that this was my home?"

"H'm--did I?"

"I haven't any other _now_. Let me think of the Fort as my home." He paused, but her aspect was not encouraging, was hardly hospitable. He went on: "Let _me_ look after the roof, and--"

"Certainly not. I have looked after everything for half a century. When I'm dead some one else may do it--not before."

"Ah, you know what I mean. You've lost your only son. Give me some of his privileges." She jerked away her head, as she did when she was moved, and wanted not to betray the fact. "I am tired of being homeless," Ethan said.

"You will make a home of your own, my dear."

"I want this for my home."

She turned suddenly, and looked at him with eyes that were keen and intent under their film of tears.

"No," she said, slowly, "this does for us. It is not the kind of home for you."

"It is the kind I want."

He smiled in that sudden, radiant way of his.

"No; the Fort is here to shelter and protect other people. You don't need it."

"But I do; and it's _my_ Fort. Why, you've never even taken my name off the door."