The Open Question Part 87

He stopped.

"Oh, it's all right," she said, a little impatiently. "I've come to visit an old school-friend."

They chose one of the carriages in front of the hotel, and drove rapidly out of town.

She shrank back into her corner, feeling his eyes too keen upon her; but when by chance she encountered them, she would have been less than woman if she had not been rea.s.sured by the admiration in their kindling depths.

"I suppose I'm changed too," he said, smiling.

"Y-yes; you're a little more alarming than you used to be."

"Oh, really!" he laughed.

"I suppose the change in me is a different one?"

He nodded.

"You've kept your word."

"My word?"

"Don't you remember telling me that I was rather good-looking at that time, but the difference between us was that you'd improve and that I'd grow repellent and plain if I wasn't very careful?"

"I _never_ said such a--"

"Oh yes. You used to be a wise child. Are you a wise woman?"

"Not enough to hurt," she said, with a little grimace.

He asked about Mrs. Gano and Emmie, and the bedridden An' Jerusha. The year before, Venus had married the mulatto postman, and Val, at Ethan's suggestion, had bought them a cottage, where they all lived very happily. Val told him of the advent of the twins.

"What are you doing here?" she inquired, presently.

"Political business."

"I suppose you think I wouldn't understand that."

"I think it would probably bore you."

"Why bore me more than any other girls?"

"I didn't say so. But most young ladies of your age--"

"I'll soon be twenty-three; Julia is only twenty-four."

She could have bit her tongue out for her maladroitness.

"Julia? Ah, how is Julia?"

"This is pretty; let us stop here."

"All right. Driver, just pull up in that shade and wait for us."

They walked across the field, to a clump of trees by the Virginia rail-fence that separated them from the large market-garden on the other side.

"Now that I've come all this way," Val said, leaning against one of the elms, with her hands loosely clasped in front of her, "I want to run home and leave things to chance."

He made no answer. She glanced up to find him looking at her with an intentness that confused her. She turned away, sat down, and took off her hat. Her hair was loose; she pinned it up as well as she could, but her hands felt unskilful, helpless. She could not free herself from the sense of those deep eyes arraigning, caressing, compelling her. She looked up with a fluttering smile.

"Sit down, and don't stare."

He only leaned back against the opposite elm.

"Yes, there's some other change in you besides the growing prettier.

What's happened?"

In the hypersensitized state of her nerves the question hurt keenly.

That they should not have met for all this time, and he ask that! It was all she could do to keep the tears out of her lowered eyes.

"Come," he urged, "is some of the gilt worn off your particular piece of gingerbread?"

"No," she said, with recovered firmness; "I've not come to complain.

I've only come to be helped to understand."

"Ah, life has p.r.i.c.ked you, I see that--and"--he smiled faintly--"you don't understand."

"Yes," she said--the voice was not quite so steady--"I've got hurt. If I'd sat quiet, I wouldn't have b.u.mped myself against sharp corners. But I shall not sit quiet."

"Oh no, you may be depended on for that."

"But I _have_ sat quiet, you know, for years. That's done with, now."

He s.h.i.+fted his position uneasily.

"I don't want any longer to be always fortunate, always happy. I want to know about life. I want to understand."

Still he said nothing.

"It's a kind of death not to understand," she said.

"And has some of Death's peace to recommend it. But let's come to Hecuba. What do you want to understand?"

"It--is so--hard for me to say."

"Harder than not understanding?"

"No. I--want to know--if you have any objection to releasing me from my promise?"

"What promise?"