The Open Question Part 116

"I wasn't thinking of the ball, oddly enough. What a _horrible_ racket those men have been making all day putting up the pavilion!"

He leaned his head on his hand. His face looked worn.

"I'm so sorry they disturbed you, but I'm glad the hammock's just for me." She ran out as soon as supper was over to contemplate her new toy.

"Ethan!" she called, presently.

He came on to the veranda wearing a hat and carrying a walking-stick.

Her countenance fell.

"Aren't you coming to have a swing?"

He laughed.

"Not for me, thank you!"

"Where are you going?"

"Just for a little walk. It's not good for you to be out after sundown!"

he called back as he went off.

She lay in the hammock very still a long while. The frogs far off were iterating their hoa.r.s.e melancholy. Was it a belated firefly that flickered dejectedly in the chill air? An oppression settled down on her chest, but she never felt it for the greater weight on her heart. She pressed her two hands tight over her face, that the servants might not hear her crying.

"To think that this should be _me_," she said to herself, in a kind of excitement, "when I meant to be so happy! After all"--she sat up and steadied herself as she swayed--"it's very wonderful to have found life so much better, and so much worse, than anybody ever said. If only Ethan and I could go through the hard places by ourselves, if only there were no one else--oh, G.o.d, if only there were no one else!"

She lay back again in the hammock. By-and-by a noise in the house: Ethan putting quick questions, several servants speaking at once, then Ethan's voice, sharp with anxiety, calling:

"Val! Val!"

"Yes, out here."

Hastily she dried her face.

He came out.

"You surely have not been out here ever since--"

"Yes; ever since you went away and left me."

But she spoke almost brightly.

"Well, I must say I think you might have remembered--"

"Can't remember but one thing at a time. I was thinking about something else."

"You're not to be trusted," he said, gravely.

"Not a bit," she agreed. "I'm an eye-servant. The minute your back's turned-- Oh, I require a great deal of looking after--and"--with a laugh that broke suspiciously--"I don't get it."

She had stood up, holding fast to him, as she freed herself from the hammock and the rug. He drew her hand through his arm and went with her to the house.

"No, no," she said, stopping at the veranda, "_I_ want a little walk, too."

Demurring, he put the rug round her and they went on.

"I've been thinking it would be a good idea to go to California for the winter," he said, presently.

"You've seen California."

"But _you_ haven't."

"No, and I don't want to."

"Is that true?"

"Well, it's true that I want to see other places more--queerer places, farther off, that I can't imagine for myself."

"Don't flatter yourself that you can imagine California. I was thinking I ought to look after my ranch there. And, besides, the place in Oakland is really beautiful. I could make you very comfortable there."

"Could you?" she said, wistfully. "But, after all, 'comfortable' is for ninety."

"It is curious that I should have to remind you we mustn't think now only of ourselves."

How stern the eyes could look--the mouth, how hard! They walked on in silence, down the first terrace, and along the second. No wilderness rioted below, all was pruned and trimmed and primly smiling. In the middle of what Mrs. Gano had been used to call "the Lower Plateau" stood the dancing pavilion, finished that day, all but the outward trappings of flags and lanterns.

"I believe you'd like the house at Oakland." He spoke more gently than before. "There's a garden and a little orange-grove, and the land slopes down to the sea."

"Do you look out on the Golden Gate?" she asked, quickly, and then added, involuntarily: "But, after all, what do I care about that? I want to see people in other lands, and find out what life looks like to _them_."

"You can do something of the sort later, if you like."

"Oh, later! later! Everybody's said 'later' to me ever since I was born.

Who knows whether I'll _ever_ go at all if I don't go now?"

"Ha!" he said, with a flash, "now we have the _real_ reason."

She lowered her eyes and was dumb.

"Will you tell me why, just lately, when you have greater incentive than you ever had before, you seem to have less hope, a weaker hold on life?"

"All imagination," she said, evasively. "Listen to that woodp.e.c.k.e.r." Her head drooped, dreamily. How pale she looked in the gray light! "He's tapping the old locust-tree under my window, just as he used to--hundreds of years ago--when I was a little girl."

"Val," he said, "you are not like yourself."

"No," she answered, vaguely.

He took her face between his hands as if to catch and concentrate the wandering spirit.