The Open Question Part 107

"What do you mean by a rhythm?"

"A rise and a fall. A winter because there has been a summer."

"No, no, Ethan." Her voice rang piteously.

"I'm not blaming you, dear."

"Blaming _me_? I should think not." She spoke almost cavalierly.

"It's the same with the fortunes of love, I suppose," he went on, "as it is with the fortunes of families, of nations, creeds, crops." He laughed a little ironic laugh. "The very planets have a time of prosperity, a point of ascendancy reached, a time of failing, an ultimate--"

"Ethan, Ethan, what are you saying!" She stopped him as he paced the parlor from Daniel Boone to the mirror. She remembered the evening that her father, in that very room, had "forbidden the banns." "You know I don't let you talk like that of our dear love."

"I only say it to myself, child, as a kind of comfort."

"_You_ need comforting, too?"

He nodded, smiling in his grave way.

"I tell myself it's not my darling that is to blame. We've been almost too happy. The old leveller, Nature, is at her eternal work of rotation, turning the big wheel round. By so much as we've been on the top we must go under for a little."

"Ethan, that may be good science, but it's very poor love."

"It's the best apology I can invent for you."

"For _me_?" Her voice rang along an indignant circ.u.mflex.

"It's certainly not I who was tired."

"Oh, Ethan, I was never tired for the smallest little bit of an instant.

Kiss me! kiss me!" She clung about his neck. "It was only that I was tired of Julia's high laugh, and--and tired of her altogether!" she burst out.

"Then why do you have her here?" he asked, without a moment's hesitation.

"Oh, only because you like her so much," Val said, with her old childish frankness.

"As to that, I like her well enough. She's provincial, but she's lively and good-tempered. However, if she's got on your nerves, I don't want her about."

"It would be very selfish of me--" Val began, with reluctantly righteous air.

"Nonsense. How long do you want to stay here, anyhow?"

"Do you mean you're ready to go away?" she asked, her lips parting and her white teeth gleaming in a half incredulous smile.

"I do call that ingrat.i.tude."

"Of course I know it was for my sake at first--"

"First and last, Mrs. Gano; though what good it does Emmie--"

"Oh-h!" She leaned her head against him with a happy sigh. "You're thinking of Emmie!"

"As to Julia," he said, reflectively, "I didn't know enough about women's friends.h.i.+ps to be able to tell--"

He looked down at the face on his shoulder considering.

"Yes," she said, smiling, "let me in--tell me the worst."

"You see, Julia"--he hesitated--"it won't be easy to make you understand without hurting you."

Val stood suddenly erect, the smile gone. But very gently he pressed her head down on his shoulder again, and rested his cheek on her hair.

"You see, Julia is like a game of tennis, or a pleasant picture of the anecdotic kind. She doesn't give one cause to think; she is mildly amusing and agreeably irrelevant."

"What is there in that to hurt me?" said the suspicious voice under his chin.

"There is nothing that ought to hurt you. But such a person may at times be a sort of--a sort of--"

"Distraction--refuge; just what I used to be."

"As if any one ever could be what you used to be!"

He held her closer.

"You're saying what I _used_ to be, as if--"

She struggled to get out of his arms, but he kept her prisoner.

"Hus.h.!.+ Listen. It's only this, dear: In sharing my life you have come a little--a little under the shadow. No, you aren't what you used to be--a gay little cousin that one could laugh with, and, as I thought, leave behind. You are something so much nearer that you are a dearer self. You give hope a new gladness"--she looked up with happy eyes--"you give fear fresh poignancy."

"No--no," she said lightly, concerned only to lift him out of his grave mood. "No, Ethan, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I have not found it dull or gloomifying to be with you. You invent sad things to say, but we've had a heavenly time--till just lately."

"Yes, we found happiness if ever two people did!" But he looked at her with so strange a pa.s.sion of questioning that she kissed his eyelids down.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

She longed more and more to go abroad again.

"As soon as ever you please," said Ethan.

How good he was to her! How he indulged her! How wonderful it was to be loved by such a man! Soon they'd be off again on their travels, seeing the beautiful Old World. Oh, Life was keeping her promises every one!

Five days after the talk about Julia came a letter from Mother Joachim, saying that Emmie's health was quite restored, but that she was inflexible about not seeing her sister. Mother Joachim herself thought it best that, for a year or so, nothing more should be said of the proposed meeting. Perhaps the girl would be willing to see her friends before taking the black veil.