The Open Question Part 8

"I am needed at home," she said. "I shall not remain in Boston longer than is necessary to secure your agreement to Ethan's coming to us for a visit."

"I have already said, madam--"

"I should not feel the object of my journey attained unless the date were fixed."

They stood looking at each other.

It will never be known how much Mr. Tallmadge's readiness to restore Mrs. Gano to the bosom of her family influenced his views at this juncture. He turned away and considered, with one foot on the fender and chin-whisker in hand.

"This next summer," he said, "I have promised to take Ethan to my brother's place in the White Mountains."

"Then the summer after this."

"Yes; the summer after he could come, if he were well."

"If he were ill, I would come to see him."

"Ah--yes."

"When does his vacation begin?"

"About the middle of June."

"If he is well, you will send him to us the third week?"

"Yes."

They shook hands solemnly.

CHAPTER IV

It was when Ethan was seven years old that he was permitted to go to New Plymouth to spend his summer holidays. He was brought by his uncle Elijah Tallmadge, who, on his way to Cincinnati, satisfied his sense of duty, if not his civility, by dropping the little boy on the platform of the New Plymouth station, and watching from the window of the receding train how a tall, grave girl in an old-fas.h.i.+oned bonnet, and with a turbaned negress in her wake, went up to the little traveller and greeted him.

"Are you Ethan Gano?" said the lady, gently.

"Yes," answered the child.

She kissed him. "I am your aunt Valeria," she said, and took his trunk check out of his hand and gave it to the negro hackman, who departed to claim the child's belongings.

When the boy had said he was Ethan Gano, he was startled by an exclamation of uncouth joy from the negress who stood behind his aunt.

Jerusha showed her strong teeth in a smile of wide beneficence, and rolled her great bulging eyes till Ethan quaked.

"Tooby sho'," she broke out; "didn't I tell yo' he'd got de Gano look in his lubly face? He's jes' de spi't en image ob his paw;" and she held out her motherly arms to embrace him.

Ethan fled, shuddering, not from fear alone, but from that sense, so much stronger in the Northern bred than in the Southern, of physical shrinking from the black. Ethan held himself to have escaped a dire indignity, as he overtook his aunt at the edge of the platform, close to a dilapidated carriage. He looked back, fearing the black woman was following, and might be coming with them. But no, there she was, shuffling down a side street with her heavy see-saw hip-motion. Ethan's little trunk was put on the box, and he and his aunt got into the dilapidated vehicle and drove off with a rattling and jingling of loose windows and ancient bra.s.s-mounted harness. Presently they pa.s.sed Jerusha, who smiled in at them broadly, seeming to bear no trace of a grudge. But Ethan colored and looked away.

His aunt did not seem to be a talkative person. She sat looking out of the window almost as if she were alone. She did, however, point out the Court-house, and when they rumbled and clattered over the great wooden bridge, "Now we are crossing the Mioto," she said; "we live on the other side. It's much nicer to live on the other side."

"Oh _yes_," said Ethan, as though he appreciated the advantage keenly.

His aunt had delicate aquiline features, and a singularly beautiful pale skin. He did not know it, but the two occupants of the carriage were curiously alike, even to the look of melancholy lurking in the eyes of each. Ethan noticed that the ungloved hand that lay listless in her lap was very long, and whiter than any hand he had ever seen.

They suddenly turned off the main street leading from the bridge.

"This is Was.h.i.+ngton Street," said his aunt. "If you lean out you'll see our house." But the trees were too thick for one who didn't know where to look to distinguish the glimpses of the gray-stone building. In a moment the vehicle stopped. "Here we are," said Aunt Valeria.

Ethan looked up at the ma.s.sive gray front above him on a terrace only a little back from the street. Ampelopsis trailed over, but did not yet hide the great blocks of hand-hewn stone that in those old days had been set up for defence between the pale-face and the Indian.

Aunt Valeria opened the gate, and Ethan followed her up the half-dozen stone steps and along the brick-paved path to the porch. There in the doorway, between the big Doric columns, stood a tall, slim woman, dressed in black, with ma.s.ses of silvered hair nearly covered by a white veil. Her face was furrowed, but she wore a look of welcome and a light of unquenched youth in her smiling eyes that made the child smile too, feeling himself no stranger, but as one who had come home. She set her hands on either side his face and kissed him.

"But where is Mr. Tallmadge?" Mrs. Gano asked her daughter when they were in the hall.

"Gone on to Cincinnati. He didn't get out of the train."

"_What?_ He never left this child to the chance of--"

Ethan had never seen any one look so angry. The eyes that had been smiling flashed a steely blue fire. He shrank away to the neighborhood of the more friendly umbrellas in the hat-rack.

"Oh, he knew we would be sure to meet him," said Aunt Valeria, apologetically.

"One can never be sure of anything of the kind! Suppose either you or I had been very ill! To drop a little child like that on a strange platform, as you would a sack of corn--"

Ethan felt covered with shame at the conduct of his uncle. He had heard Mrs. Gano herself criticised in Boston, but he felt now that her standards, after all, seemed higher, and her eyes were certainly more terrifying than any in the house of Tallmadge.

The hackman was struggling up-stairs with the trunk, Mrs. Gano bidding him have a care of the paper and the bal.u.s.trade.

Ethan noticed there was a big open door at the end of the hall and a vision through of a veranda and green trees. In the hall was an oaken hat-rack, with umbrella-stand and two carved oaken chairs on either side, with high fleur-de-lis backs. While his grandmother was paying the hackman, the child discovered that the seats of these chairs lifted up in a miraculous manner. Unnoticed, he raised one a little and inserted his hand--something p.r.i.c.kly, even porcupiney! He withdrew precipitately.

Was it a beast in there, or only a brush? He resolved upon cautious exploration at a more convenient season.

The hackman was going now, and Aunt Valeria was taking the boy up-stairs to be washed.

"Don't be long," said his grandmother, smiling over the banister as he went up; "supper is ready."

What a comfort that she seemed to have forgotten Uncle Tallmadge's disgraceful conduct!

The one jarring note during that first meal under his grandmother's roof was the apparition of the negress who had dared to offer to kiss him. To be sure, when she appeared this time, it was with a plate of smoking squares of Johnny-cake; but Ethan couldn't meet her eye, and shrank under his blue serge jacket when she came behind his chair to offer him that delectable staple of a Southern supper-table. He did not notice that the meal was very plain, it was all so good, and the silver on the table was much prettier than that Miss Tallmadge presided over in Boston.

While his Aunt Valeria and his grandmother talked, he ate steadily, and regarded with awe the immensely tall coffee-pot and other things that were covered all over with trees and little paG.o.da-like buildings in repousse. Seeing Mrs. Gano behind this service gave him an impression of her wealth and magnificence that no after series of meagre meals and authentic knowledge of her poverty was ever able quite to efface.

Observing the child craning his neck to see the inscription on the sugar-bowl, she turned it towards him.

"It is your own name," she said: "Ethan Gano. It will belong to you some day."

"Oh!" said Ethan, feeling his prospects to be princely.

"Now you may come and walk about a little," she said, rising. "But fold your napkin and put it in your ring."