The Open Question Part 9

He noticed the ring was marked "E. G.," and laid it down with a sense of owners.h.i.+p. It wasn't like visiting in a strange place when you found your own name on the things at supper.

Valeria brought her mother a shawl, and disappeared. Ethan put his hand in Mrs. Gano's, and with great care moderating his child's pace to one sedate and slow, he pa.s.sed out on to the veranda at the back with his grandmother on that first tour of inspection. There were heavy wooden settees on the veranda against the wall.

"Oh, I shall sit here when I do my lessons," said Ethan, coming out of his shyness.

"No; you must bring out a chair," said his grandmother; "these benches are so black."

"What makes them black?"

"The soot. We burn bituminous coal here. You'll have to wash your hands oftener than you do in Boston."

"Doesn't anybody ever sit on these benches?"

"Never. Why do you do lessons in holiday time?"

"Grandfather expects me to."

"Humph!" said Mrs. Gano.

They had come down off the veranda towards the terraces that sloped on this side down below the level of the street at the bottom of the property, which occupied an angle between Was.h.i.+ngton Street and Mioto Avenue. They went down the first flight of stone steps, but stopped at the top of the second.

"We won't go down there," said Mrs. Gano. "It is a perfect wilderness."

"Really?" said Ethan, making great eyes of wonder. "What's down there?"

"What you see. Huge sunflowers, and reeds, and gra.s.ses--it's very damp in the middle--and briers and wild roses, blackberries, great weeds and bushes, dock and tall mullein, and up on that side where the ground rises a little towards the lower terrace, there used to be a garden--where you see the asparagus gone to seed."

"But it's a _real_ wilderness?" asked the boy, radiant.

"I should say so."

"Snakes, too?"

"I shouldn't wonder."

His heart beat hard. This was a wonderful place to come to for a visit.

It was almost a pity one didn't live here.

"Are those apple-trees along the bottom of the terrace?"

"No, quince. And that one big tree in the middle of the lower plateau is a choke-pear."

"Isn't there a vine climbing up?"

"Yes. There are grapes down there in the autumn."

"How long do you think I can stay?"

"We'll see," she said, in a somewhat defiant tone, as they turned to go up the terrace.

There were still some "s...o...b..a.l.l.s" on the great guelder rose-bushes, and the waxberries on the little one's gleamed like pearls.

"I like this place," said the child, suddenly.

"That's right, my dear."

They were up on the level of the house now, past the long veranda with the banned black benches. It was growing dusk, a time that under all conditions of this child's life made rude test of cheer. He drew nearer to the tall, bent figure. She dropped his hand, and stooped over the edge of clovered gra.s.s.

"What is it?" he asked, as she stood upright with something in her hand.

"A four-leaved clover--the third I've found to-day."

"Oh, do you think there are any more?"

He knelt down and examined the clump.

"You may have this," she said, presently, "and we'll come and look to-morrow, when we have a better light."

"Oh, thank you."

He held the clover carefully, thinking of the fairy-tale.

Now they were pa.s.sing the great, perfectly straight tulip-tree, that went up and up like a s.h.i.+p's mast before the far-away boughs soared out into the dim depths of evening air. A light breeze had risen. A bird high up in the proudly waving branches twittered faintly. Except for that, a hush was over the world; but in the child's heart there was a mysterious sense of tumult, one of those periodic waves of excitement that rush over sensitive young creatures, along with the vague consciousness of the wonder of this strange thing, life, that is opening out before their thrilling senses.

Ethan stood looking up till a kind of delicious dizziness seized him, and he leaned his head lightly against his grandmother's arm. She smiled down into his eyes, saying never a word, but when they went in-doors there was understanding between them.

A large octagon-shaped lamp of debased Moorish design hung in the hall, and the light came through the eight panes of parti-colored gla.s.s with a cheerful, even festive, effect. The parlor on the left of the front-door was dark. The great room opposite, which ran the whole length of that end of the house, and had two windows at either extremity, was Mrs.

Gano's sitting-room in summer, and, by an arrangement of screens, her bedroom as well in winter. There was a single lamp burning on one of the pair of heavy old card-tables on either side the fireplace. Opposite, along the wall separating the room from the hall, stretched a great old-fas.h.i.+oned buffet, consisting of two mahogany cupboards, with drawers above, and pillared porches below, and an arched and carved back bridging them, and forming below a well-polished surface, whereon stood empty cut-gla.s.s decanters and tall celery vases. The long drawer of this middle part of the buffet, as well as those on the top of the cupboards on either side, was opened by a big bra.s.s ring held in a lion's mouth.

The fireplace opposite was screened by an extensive landscape in oils, framed in ornate and tarnished gilt. All the s.p.a.ce on each side of the mantel-piece right and left as far as the windows was filled with bookcases and mineralogical cabinets built into the wall. Between the front windows was an old-fas.h.i.+oned escritoire, reaching high up, nearly to the ceiling, always locked, and equally always wearing the air of a keeper of things secret and important. An engraving, grown brown with age, hung in a faded gilt frame above the fireplace. It was the great scene from "Measure for Measure," and above the buffet hung another from "The Tempest," with "What is't? A spirit?" written underneath. On the mantel-piece were two tall blue china vases, that had been old, Mrs.

Gano said, when she was young. She sat down by the lamp in a chair that no one ever saw the like of before. Very big and very crimson, it was rounded out in semicircular fas.h.i.+on on each side at the top, forming well-padded cus.h.i.+ons against which to rest the head; but no one ever saw Mrs. Gano making such a use of them. The chair had arms and a foot-rest, and was mounted upon short, strong rockers--altogether a structure of unique device, that no one up to that time, except its proper owner, ever dared dream of inhabiting for a moment.

Mrs. Gano handed Ethan a book.

"I suppose you know that by heart?"

"_Moral Tales?_ No; I've only heard about 'em."

"Is it possible? What do you read, then?"

"You see, I have to study a good deal."

"But when you aren't studying?"

"Well, then, you see, I read only the things I like."

"To be sure. But what kind of things?"

"Well"--he colored faintly--"I read Hans Christian Andersen mostly. But I _like_ 'Horatius at the Bridge,'" he added, as though anxious to redeem his character, "and _Henry of Navarre_, and _Paul Revere_."