The Open Question Part 101

"'To my thought it is a source of constant mental distortion to make the denial of this a part of religion--to go on pretending things are better than they are. To me early death takes the aspect of salvation.'"

"Now I ask you, Can you find nothing better than that to say to a girl?"

"It was not I who found it."

"You say it's George Eliot. Well, she had too much sense to present that view to a young girl. She put it in a diary. If you've nothing better to put into yours, so much the worse for you. Don't you know there are two ways of interpreting 'whom the G.o.ds love die young'?"

"Yes"--he smiled--"'young' when they die at eighty." And he looked at the living commentary.

"Very well; it's a view to keep in mind. But it's not only occasional things like that that I deprecate in your letters; the letters themselves should cease."

"Really." He drew himself up and returned her direct look, but the wasted face and sunken eyes struck compunction to his heart. "Very well," he said, soothingly.

"It's not very well at all, but very ill, that you should try to waive the subject."

"Waive it?"

"Yes. You think I'm dying, and you won't oppose me. I'm not dying, and I mean to see Val through this before I _do_ die."

"Through what?"

"Through her foolish befogment about you. I had a long talk with Harry Wilbur last week. He has behaved well. _You_--" She paused, as if trying to pluck out the heart of his mystery; then, abandoning the attempt: "I want you to promise me before you leave this room that you'll go away by the next train, and that you won't see Val, or write to her, till one or other of you is safely and suitably married."

He had a moment's temptation to pacify her at all costs, but as he looked into the old face he felt that a degradation would cling to him if he played falsely with a spirit as honest and courageous as this. She wasn't a woman one could lie to comfortably.

"I can't promise you that," he said, after a struggle.

"Why not?"

"Oh, the old reason," he answered, with a look of weary pain.

"What is that?"

She craned her head forward.

"You have to ask?"

"I have to ask."

"I love her."

"And don't you know--" Her loyalty to Val stopped her. "Why don't you tell her?"

"I have."

"Then, why aren't you-- What's the trouble?"

"What's the trouble?" he echoed.

"Yes. You surely aren't waiting for me to go?"

"No, no," he said, hastily, feeling his fears for the moment dislodged and feebly flying like a flock of bats and owls before the daylight in the brave old eyes. "No, no; you are not the barrier."

"What then?"

"I suppose, primarily, it's Uncle John. He left us a legacy."

"John!"

A sudden mist of weakness rose before her like a veil.

"Yes."

Ethan turned away, and paced the dim room from the bedside to the fireplace, back and forth. It came over the sick woman that it was just so John had walked and talked about this life he lacked the energy to live. How like him Ethan was growing in air and manner! It was as if John had got up out of his grave to walk the old track in the old restless fas.h.i.+on. What was it he was saying about "the wreck of creeds"?

"--the mere expediency of the conventions right and wrong, and yet man's hopeless struggle to be rid of the phantom Duty. If you pa.s.s the churches by, she confronts you in the schools, in the laboratory, follows you in the streets, dogs you day and night, the 'implacable huntress.' We may free ourselves from all superst.i.tions but Duty. She, in one guise or another, is ever at the heels of men."

"You wouldn't be a Gano if you didn't feel so," she said, wondering vaguely if she had dreamed Ethan's coming and John's going.

Which was it, walking the worn and faded track on Valeria's old blue Brussels?

"Exactly. So Uncle John said."

Ah, then it was Ethan!

"What was it John said?"

She drew herself up, and shook off the veil of faintness.

"Several unforgettable things about man's first duty to the race--about not inflicting upon others the burdens Val and I must bear."

"Burdens!" (Ah, she remembered now what they had been talking about.) "What burden, I'd like to know, does Val bear that you can't lift?"

"Her father's."

"Humph! And you?"

"She and I are of one blood. We carry a double share."

"And let me tell you"--she sat up straight in the great bed--"a double share of Gano is no bad addition to the world's brew."

"Did you ever say that to Uncle John?"

"Good Heaven! To hear you talk, a body'd think you had invented the law of heredity--you and your uncle John."

"G.o.d forbid!"

"Well, G.o.d _has_ forbid, and let that content you. He is quite capable of looking after His own world."