The Open Question Part 10

"Well, now you may read _Moral Tales_. It was your father's book, and you may have it if you'll take care of it. I'll cover it for you to-morrow."

"Oh, thank you," said the boy.

She opened her own volume where a worked marker kept the place, and began to read. But Ethan was too excited to follow suit. He sat looking at her, and about the room. The pressed four-leaved clover presently fell out of her book on to the footstool. He picked it up carefully and handed it to her.

"Ah!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, smiling, and turning back to the beginning of the volume, where she replaced the leaf. But Ethan had watched the discreet turning of yellowed pages.

"Why, your Bible is _full_ of clovers," he said.

"This is not the Bible, it is Lockhart's Scott," she answered. "And as for the four-leaved clovers, I find them as I walk about in the evenings."

"I suppose you look for them because they're so lucky?"

"Nonsense! of course not. They just look up at me from the gra.s.s."

Ethan felt dashed a little, but he noticed how the long, slim fingers held the book so that no more clovers should fall out. She must think a good deal of them, he concluded.

Many an older person under the circ.u.mstances would have felt it inc.u.mbent upon her to entertain the child; but while no doubt some young people might have been made happier by being noticed more, there are those, especially the shy and sensitive ones, who are all the better for a little wholesome letting alone. It is evident that the officious attempts of many well-meaning adults to amuse, even if it involve making mountebanks of themselves, are ofttimes destined to humiliation. We have all seen children solemnly regarding grown-up capers with the air of philosophers looking down with scorn upon an antic world.

There was something in his grandmother's calm pursuit of her usual routine that set the child at ease. If she had gone obviously out of her way to make herself agreeable to him, he, with the perversity of his type, would have been more on his guard against her blandishments.

His Boston relatives were evidently quite wrong in every respect about his grandmother. His grandfather Tallmadge had sympathized with him deeply at having to pay this duty visit. Even Aunt Hannah had evident misgivings, and had put a seed-cake in his trunk. He felt a sudden resentment against those estimable persons for their distrust and thinly veiled dislike of his grandmother Gano. Already he saw himself her champion and faithful knight, ready to do battle, if need be, for his sovereign lady. It was not altogether strange that the conquest of the child was so speedy, for the heart of the woman was full of a pa.s.sionate tenderness for this little Ethan come back again, so like the one she had lost that he seemed to bring with him her youth and all the sunny circ.u.mstance of those far-off Maryland days. She softened wondrously to the child, yet it was so little her way to be demonstrative that she neither alarmed nor bored the boy, but simply took hold on his imagination. He, quick of spirit and keen of sense, responded as the natural child will, to the rea.s.suring spectacle of beautiful and august age. What children suffer from sheer ugliness in their elders is not to be written down. Partly in that many mercifully forget, and partly in that others remember certain martyrdoms too vividly to set them down without a blush. One is inclined to think, looking back, that life has taught us nothing more successfully than tolerance of these departures from a possible comeliness; for it is not irregularity of feature or deepening furrows or whitening hair that appall the child, but the unnecessary ugliness of dress and eccentricity of demeanor, and, above all, the avoidable and indecent display of the ravages of time.

With every desire to think n.o.bly of women, it must be admitted that it is chiefly they who offend against the canon childhood unconsciously sets up, that old age shall not with impunity offend or affright the young.

Mrs. Gano would have repelled indignantly the idea that her grandson's affection had anything to do with her spotless neatness; the sober distinction of her plain silk gowns, made before the war; her white lawn kerchiefs, rolling up from her V-shaped bodice, fold on fold, voluminous and soft about her neck; her full lawn undersleeves, that came so daintily out from the silk, and fastened with a silver sh.e.l.l b.u.t.ton at the wrist, flowing out again in a fine ruffle, and falling over her hands. As to that most distinctive touch of all, the veil of plain white net that covered, and yet did not conceal, the thick silver hair ma.s.sed about the high sh.e.l.l comb, one cannot help thinking that if she had quite realized its effectiveness, she would have considered it her duty to discard it. She always said she disliked caps as "would-be ornamental," and besides, she had "too much hair;" she "would be top-heavy in a cap." So she had adopted the white net veil, fastened just behind the heavy rings of hair on the temples with a pair of pearl and silver pins of curious old design, and the veil fell down to the shoulders behind, concealing the neck, masking a little the droop of the bowed back, and falling softly down each side of the strong old face, and dropping into her lap.

The child sat with the open book in his hand, but with big eyes roving, reading as well as he could the more obscure but not less interesting story incarnate in the great red chair, getting the details by heart in the observant way of children.

"What time do you usually go to bed?" she asked, presently, turning a page.

"When I feel sleepy."

"H'm! I think eight o'clock is a good time."

"It's pretty early," he said, wistfully.

"Your father, when he was your age, always went to bed at eight."

"Oh!"

"Aunt Jerusha will come presently and take you up-stairs."

"_Aunt_ Jerusha!"

He dropped the _Moral Tales_ on the floor. The terrifying black woman was his aunt!

"Oh, oh! that's not the way to treat books. The Ganos are always very careful of their books."

Ethan recovered the volume hurriedly, a prey to conflicting agitations.

"Where's Aunt Valeria?" he said, presently.

"Up in the blue room"--Mrs. Gano glanced overhead, and then looked out severely into s.p.a.ce over her gold spectacles, adding, meditatively, "making herself ill with writing."

"Oh, if she's writing letters, I s'pose I mustn't 'sturb her."

"H'm! she's not writing letters."

"What is she writing?"

"Verses, most probably."

"Poetry verses?"

"Well, _verses_, at any rate," she said, a little grimly. It was noticed that during Valeria's lifetime Mrs. Gano never spoke of her daughter's work except as "verses;" after her death it was all "poetry." "It's high time she was interrupted. Go up-stairs, child," she said, turning to Ethan, "and knock at the door next your own, and say I sent you."

It was a possible escape from that other most awful "aunt." He laid the _Moral Tales_ down as if they were made of gla.s.s, and departed with alacrity.

Twice he had to knock upon the blue room door before a voice said:

"Who's there?"

"It's me, Aunt Valeria."

"Oh, run away, dear."

"But, please, I'm sent."

A little pause and the door was opened. A s.p.a.cious bedchamber, where everything--walls, curtains, carpet, and bedfurnis.h.i.+ng--was a soft faded blue, almost gray in this light. The floor was strewn with papers, books and papers lay on the chairs, on the sofa, even on the preternaturally high and ma.s.sive bedstead, that looked quite inaccessible to all save the athletic without the aid of a ladder.

"Did my mother send you?" asked Aunt Valeria.

"Yes, and--oh, are you awful busy?"

His voice faltered a little.

"Why?" she said, taking the child by the hand and leading him in.

The action of kindliness wrought upon the perturbed little spirit. His eyes filled with tears.

"You see," he said, "I thought she was a servant."

"Who was a servant?"

"My other aunt."

"Miss Tallmadge?"