The Open Question Part 95

"You're not calmly confronting your fate," she said, smiling dimly.

"Come." He held out his hand.

She took it and laid her cheek against it.

"I'll come with you," she said, "into the light or into the dark."

"Child, child, what have I done to you?"

He dropped the cus.h.i.+on in the bottom of the boat. She clung to him. He wavered, the boat rocked violently.

"Be careful, it's deep here," she said, and drew him down on the cus.h.i.+on at her feet.

"Val"--he averted his face--"you must try to understand. The barrier between you and me is a real one. It's not a question of whether your father's views were right or wrong, but that our imaginations have been infected by them. I, at least, would always be fearing, expecting disaster, and the fear would bring the evil to pa.s.s. Or even if it didn't, the fear would--would destroy us."

"No, no!"

"It's true. I have no courage equal to facing either my family inheritance, or my own dread of life--in a little child." He threw off her clinging hand. "_Think_ of any one feeling as I do about life, thrusting it on another--on some one I would love as I would love your--" He dropped his head and covered his eyes with his hand.

"Why do you think always of some possible other person? Why do you never think of _me_?" she cried.

He made a sudden movement, dropping his hand on the gunwale of the boat, and looking straight into her eyes, with something new in the mobile face, something that inundated, drowned her in one hot flush of pa.s.sion.

"Oh!" she cried, half closing her eyes, "do you care like that?" and she drooped forward into his open arms.

"Like this and like this," he said, kissing her fiercely. "Oh, my love!

my love! why have you infected me? Why have you poured yourself into my very blood?" He had taken her by the shoulders almost roughly, arraigning her with sombre-burning eyes. "You put that face of yours in all my dreams. I go to sleep with it on my pillow; I wake up, it still is there. In the blackest night I see you as I saw you first, standing above the darkness, holding a great light in your hand. But the light is not to light my way. Get you back into your fortress as quickly as you can." He pushed her from him. "I am the enemy."

"'Enemy,' 'coward'--I've another name for you," she said, trembling; "and if I have any light, it surely is for you. Dear Ethan, don't you see? Don't you see?"

"See?" The moody eyes were heavy with pa.s.sion.

"It's all quite clear." She sat before him in the bottom of the boat, with hands clasped, and a veiled exaltation in her eyes. "We must make a compact. We Ganos are honest people; we'll play fair."

"A compact?"

"Yes. It will seem to other people like the common one. They'll call it marriage. It may be, we'll live a lifetime together without doing the ill you most dread doing. But if--if the worst comes to the worst, we will have had one perfect year."

"What do you mean, Val?" He seized her wrists.

"It's more than every man and woman gets," she cried.

"And then?"

"Then, according to the compact, we will go out together before--before we've opened the door--to another." With a broken cry she flung herself on his breast.

"Hush, hush, child! this is all--" His eyes were full of tears.

"You'll see it is the only way. No one but ourselves will pay for our being glad a little while."

"Glad! Do you think you could be glad, poor child, with such an end forever before your eyes?"

"Hasn't all the world that end in view? Aren't many of us glad in spite of all?" She smiled up into his face. "But can't you see that I'd rather be sad with you, than be glad with any other?"

He kissed her, and then: "This is nothing but madness--and my work, too," he added, bitterly--"_my_ work."

She put her fingers on his lips.

"You take too much credit. It wasn't you who said, 'All mankind is under a sentence of capital punishment.' It isn't as if we could escape, you know."

The old sense of all the ways being barred, of being a creature trapped, lay heavy on him.

"Oh, my dear, my dear!" he said, with a weary laugh, "we ought to be less rational, or more so. You think you love me, little girl?"

He laid his hands about her throat, and as he looked into the face his senses swam again. She neither spoke nor moved, but the quick, bright scarlet was in her cheek, and all her womanhood was in her eyes.

"This leaping of the importunate blood," he thought, "all this heartache, because of the will to live of that creature who is never to be born; the spirit of the race, heedless of 'compacts,' clamoring for reincarnation."

"If life's as terrible and strange as you say," Val whispered, drawing a little away, "and if this life's _all_, why, it's as clear as daylight, we'd be less than rational, we'd be stark mad, to let our little day of happiness go by. You see"--she crept closer to him again in the failing light, half crying--"it concerns only us. We'll live our perfect day, and when the evening comes we'll lie down--"

"In each other's arms," he said, hiding his face in her loosened hair, his tortured mind turning with pa.s.sion to the image of ultimate peace.

"Yes." Sobbing faintly, she drew away that she might see his face. His voice had sounded strangely. "This is our compact," she said, and she kissed him on the lips.

"Our betrothal," he answered, dreamily, as one who has set his lips to a philter.

"Betrothal? Yes. I didn't know what a strange sound the word had. We must exchange rings. Oh, Fate, be kind to us!" She lifted up her face as she drew off the ring she wore. "You needn't be afraid to be kind. We are honest people. We'll keep faith. Ethan," she whispered, "they _can't_ grudge us so little as we ask."

"The powers that be?"

She nodded.

"You said yourself that what we ask is more than many men and women find. A year with you"--he gathered her up to his breast--"a whole year of beautiful life and beautiful love without fear of the long decline!

It's a dream to draw the very G.o.ds out of their heaven. Oh, be sure they'll be jealous of you and me."

He kissed her again and again.

"We mustn't let them be jealous. Where's your ring?"

He drew off his signet, and took from her the little old band set with pearls and two small rubies.

"Too little for me," he said, "and too--"

He smiled at the obvious femininity of the old trinket.

"It's not for you to keep. We must make a sacrifice. I'll give yours to the Spirit of the Air." She threw the signet as far up into the twilight as she could, and they both listened. "Yours is accepted," she said, triumphantly. "You must give mine to the Water."

"Aren't you afraid the Earth will be jealous?"