The Open Question Part 12

"Didn't you ever go to visit your grandfather Calvert in the mountains of Virginia?"

"No; he died before I was born."

"Then, you never got homesick?" His voice wavered a little, and then, quite firmly, he added: "Grandmamma did, and she used to go off by herself to meet the postman, who came only once a week, and she'd walk and walk till she heard him wind his horn. How do you 'spose he wound it?"

"He just blew a long blast."

"Did that make it wind? Well, anyhow, when he wound it, that used to make grandmamma homesicker than ever. It used to echo all about among her grandfather's mountains, and when she heard that she used to stop running, and sit down on a rock and cry and cry. You see, she was so afraid the postman wasn't bringing the letter to say Aunt Cadwallader was coming to take her home."

"Did my mother tell you that story to-night?" inquired Aunt Valeria, without enthusiasm.

"No; it was this morning, when I said I wasn't a bit homesick like Aunt Hannah said I'd be. Grandmamma seemed to think it didn't matter if I _was_ homesick. The Ganos nearly always are, but in the end they're always glad they came."

This obscure saying seemed not to rivet Aunt Valeria's attention; she moved as if she were going. Ethan sat up in bed and asked, a little feverishly:

"Did you know about Aunt Cadwallader bein' in the war?"

"No; I never heard she was in the war."

"Well, she _was_. She was about four years old, and the British were firing on Fort McHenry, and all the doors and windows in Baltimore were shut, and n.o.body went out, and everybody was living in the cellar, so's not to get shot, and bombs were exploding in the garden, and the fambly missed Aunt Cadwallader--"

"Oh yes," said Aunt Valeria; "she was out in the garden, wasn't she, picking up the bullets?"

"Yes; they were raining all about, and she was putting them in a little egg-basket she carried on her arm." Ethan finished, a shade crestfallen to find his scheme to entertain and, above all, to detain his aunt had been forestalled. "I thought perhaps if I told you you'd remember something that happened to _you_--when you were young, you know."

"I'm sorry I don't know any stories."

"Don't you know the one about the poor man over your fireplace?"

"What poor man?" she repeated, bewildered.

"The man without his clo'es on, tied to the wild horse."

"Oh, you mean the Mazeppa on the iron fire frame."

"Yes"--Ethan sat up again, with dilated eyes--"wolfs comin' after him, wif mouths wide open."

"Oh, well, they don't eat him up; he gets away, and lives happy ever after."

"I _am_ glad!"

He lay down, and she covered him up.

"I'd sing to you, but I'm afraid it would disturb my mother."

"Then, couldn't you say some more poetry or something?"

"I don't believe I know anything you'd like."

"Oh, I'd like anything--except the 'May Queen.'"

She sat silent a moment, and then began:

"'Once upon a midnight dreary--'

"H'm!"--and she stopped.

"Can't you remember any more?" inquired the boy, eagerly.

"Well--a--perhaps something else;" and she made a fresh start:

"'Ah, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge is withered from the lake, And no birds sing.

"'Ah, what can--'

No, no; I must think of something a little less--"

Another pause, and then:

"'Raise the light, my page, that I may see her: Thou hast come at last, then, haughty queen.'"

On and on the low voice chanted, whispered, verse after verse and page on page, until the child slept sound. In this wise was the habit formed of Aunt Valeria's prolonging her nightly ministrations till Ethan was safe beyond the touch of homesickness, beyond the need of a doubtful cheer. From most of her selections, it must be confessed, he derived only the vague comfort of listening to the rhythmic rise and fall of a friendly, sleep-wooing voice, that sent him softly to oblivion. But as the days went on he developed tyrannous preferences, and would call for "The Neckan" as regularly as he had been used in infancy to demand "The New England Cat." He managed to keep awake longer as time went on, and it took "The Ancient Mariner," or the solemn and somnolent-burdened rhyme of the "d.u.c.h.ess May" to send him to the land of Nod. He came to know these favorites by heart, and would prompt Valeria if she ventured to skip or hesitated at a line. In after years he used to feel it odd to realize how much English verse he knew by heart that he had never seen upon the printed page. But Aunt Valeria's patience was sometimes sorely taxed by his wide-eyed attention to the story. Then it was she would unkindly lapse into German, against which no young wakefulness is proof.

"Now go to sleep," she would admonish, "or I'll say 'Kennst du das Land.'" Notwithstanding it was a very dull poem, she would say it over and over, and Ethan, vanquished utterly, would fall asleep with the refrain, "Dahin, Dahin, Mocht ich mit Dir O mein Geliebter ziehn,"

sounding in his ears. He had his own view of what it was all about, and cla.s.sed it with such ditties as "Annabel Lee." "Dahin" he was satisfied was the heroine, and he determined on his return to Boston to bestow the name upon the least attractive of three terrier puppies, fresh arrivals in his absence.

There was no one to play with, apparently, here in New Plymouth, but few children could have felt the lack so little as Ethan. n.o.body interfered with him, n.o.body seemed to want him to study. The spectre of Grandfather Tallmadge was still potent enough to make him carry about a French grammar in the shallow jacket-pocket, that was always ejecting it upon an indifferent world. Ethan, on its every _mal a propos_ appearance, would hurry the book out of sight with an uneasy conscience, and betake himself into the wilderness, where he owned an oasis under a barberry-bush; or he would seek diversion from linguistic cares in the sooty attic. n.o.body seemed to mind, if only he were washed when he appeared on the surface again. That same attic, however, was a place of peril. You gained access to it by means of a ladder in a closet on the upper landing, and you went up through a trap-door into a dim and stifling atmosphere; not but what there were windows, but they seemed to admit only heat and soot. There was an army of disabled or disused pots, pitchers, vases, and so on, standing in the middle of the rough wooden floor, and above them stretched a long table like a counter, on which were ranged queer lamps and candlesticks, brackets, door-k.n.o.bs, pewter vessels and great platters, candlesnuffers and trays, and all manner of household goods and gear that had then been long out of fas.h.i.+on, and had not yet come back again. With grimy fingers Ethan poked about, taking great care not to step off the middle aisle of flooring on to the lath and plaster between the mighty hand-hewn beams. Sometimes, in more daring moods, he would venture farther afield, balancing cautiously on a beam to some remote cobwebby corner to examine nearer an object that had lured him long with its air of the unattainable. In this way he made acquaintance with certain pictures turned disobligingly to the wall, and a great horse-hair trunk, into which he peeped with palpitating heart; for all the world knew that such trunks were the abode of skeleton ladies. But here were only dusty papers. The far corner he never ventured into: it was there the great elk antlers shone, and the skull and white teeth grinned and threatened. One had just to pretend it was chained there, and strained impotently to get at little boys. Turning over a lot of ancient rubbish in a box one day, he came across a heavy old bra.s.s door-knocker with "E. Gano" on it. Down-stairs he rushed, all black and beaming.

Mrs. Gano was sitting, as usual, very upright in the great red chair, with Dean Stanley's _History of the Eastern Church_ open on her knees.

"My child, you're like a blackamoor!"

"But just look what I've found!"

"Ah, yes! I had that taken off the front-door the last thing before I left Maryland."

"Why didn't you put it on the front-door _here_?"

"You see, it's 'E. Gano.' There was no 'E. Gano' then," she said, with shadowed face.

"But there is now--I'm here."