The Open Question Part 49

"You're joking."

"I'm in dead earnest. It sounds sudden, but it isn't. Something's been the matter with me for a deuce of a long time. I haven't known what it was. I do now. I'm homesick."

"Doesn't it strike you you've postponed it a bit?"

"Dare say. We're offered every inducement to postpone it. We Americans are as pleased with Europe as children at a fair. We run up and down your marts with our purses out, delighted, astonished at your wares, at your ways; we want a souvenir from every booth, we want a peep at every side-show, we think it impossible ever to tire of the merry-go-round."

His voice dropped. "When the night comes we're ready to go home."

"Night? _Niaiserie!_"

Gano jumped up and paced the deck.

"I say, Henri, do you mind going back to Ma.r.s.eilles? If you do, mind, I must--"

"Of course I don't mind. It'll give you time to recover on the way."

He laughed good-naturedly.

His companion paced silently up and down in the fading light.

"I've known other fellows," De Poincy went on, after a long silence--"plenty of others, get rather feverish about the U. S. A., but I didn't expect it of you."

"Oh, I'm just like the rest."

"Hadn't observed the likeness before."

"I've found the Old World life a good enough game to play at; _I've_ got no reason to complain."

"Thanks, I'm sure, in the name of France, not to mention England and Italy."

"Oh, you understand me well enough. It's wonderfully attractive, this charming Old World, but from our point of view it isn't life."

"Pretty good imitation."

"That's just it," he laughed. "It's pretty and it's good, but it's _imitation_. It copies, with Chinese fidelity, old originals that were once, long ago, alive and quick; but to-day--"

"You're taking a leaf out of your old governor's book," said De Poincy, with smiling malice. "I hear cousin Aaron now." And he caricatured him mercilessly. "'To an American, sir, Europe is either a museum or a scene out of a comic opera.' Now, if one said anything like that of America you'd declare war by return of post. But we"--he lit his cigarette and threw away the match with a flourish--"we are amused; we give you exactly the license you demand--that of the child at a fair."

"Well, look here, old man"--Gano laid his hand on De Poincy's shoulder--"this child wants to catch the first boat home."

CHAPTER XVIII

He was really coming this time; in less than an hour he would be at the Fort. They were all sitting in the parlor, waiting, in festal array.

Late as it was in the year, the clear autumn afternoon was steeped in warm suns.h.i.+ne. An occasional golden dogwood leaf fluttered past the open windows, like a lazy yellow bird.

"It reminds me of October in Maryland," said Mrs. Gano, looking up from the book she was not reading. It was, at all events, mild enough to afford Emmie the extreme satisfaction of wearing her white Confirmation dress in honor of the momentous occasion. Emmie called the new frock her "Confirmation dress," although she had not been confirmed in it, and was not expecting to be till next spring. When it had been decided before Julia Otway's party that Emmie must have a new frock, she had not needed to be told that, by a system of tucks and turnings in, it would have to serve for high days and holidays for a long time. It was characteristic of the child that, looking into the future, the day of her Confirmation should loom so large.

Her dark curls were tied to-day with apple-green ribbon, and a green-and-white sash lent an air of festivity to the simple frock, and a snow-drop look to the pale little girl.

There was nothing new in Mrs. Gano's appearance as she sat in state between Daniel Boone and the centre table, nothing save the light in her eyes. Her veil, her lawn sleeves, and kerchief could not be whiter, even in Ethan's honor, and her rusty black silk wore resolutely its air of changeless age. But An' Jerusha, very rheumatic and tottery, went brave as an autumn sunset. She was peeping in at the parlor door now, her head done up deftly in a purple and orange bandanna.

"I jes' think I'll go, mehm, en wawtch fur Ma.r.s.e Efan f'om de terrus."

"You are sure everything's ready?"

"Yes, mehm. It wus po'ful short notice, en I kin tell you it's been nip and tuck. No onery n.i.g.g.e.rs could 'a' done it; but me and Venie, _we_ done it." And Jerusha carried her splendid turban off down the terrace with the air of an aged generalissimo.

Even John Gano had made his toilet with care to-day. He joined the others in the parlor a few minutes before setting off to the station to meet his nephew. Mrs. Gano's sharp eyes travelled over him for once without protest.

"You do look nice, father," said Val.

John Gano was prematurely old. His untrimmed beard, his bent head with its leonine mane of iron-gray hair, lent him an almost patriarchal look.

And yet this man was still in the forties. Such forestalling of old age is no unfamiliar phenomenon in America. He stood by the window drawing on the well-worn left-hand glove; the right, carefully folded, and good almost as new, had been much carried, but never worn.

"I must thin out these maples and dogwoods," he said, with critical eyes on the abundant gold and scarlet foliage in front of the house.

"No, no," protested his mother; "I like something before my windows.

Your pruning is too ruthless."

"I can't have the symmetry of the maples interfered with," he said, with great decision.

"Don't be too late to meet Ethan."

"... grown astonis.h.i.+ngly!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed with pride, as he went off; "and only planted in the fall of '81!"

Val had put her hair up. But there was too much of it; it overweighted the small head. The s.h.i.+fting lights in the unruly waves, and the blue of the eyes, were brought out by the particular shade of navy cloth that she wore--so plainly made that it had the effect of a cunning artifice to show off the lithe figure.

But it was less art than necessity and scarcity of cloth that governed the design. Aunt Valeria had worn it, remodelled to the flamboyant fas.h.i.+on of her day, but it was the identical blue travelling-habit of family legend in which Mrs. Gano, as a girl, made that journey across the Alleghanies in a stage-coach. It was the first time Val had worn it.

She was saving it up for New York. The tiny silver disks down the front of the bodice found themselves again, after half a century, b.u.t.toning up an eager young body, panting, impatient to cross the mountains from this side, with back to the westering sun, and with bright silver b.u.t.tons, like bosses on a s.h.i.+eld, ready to receive the first dart from out the east.

The party in the parlor were weary enough waiting before An' Jerusha hobbled into the front hall with a negro lad in tow, who brought the news that:

"Dey's bin a accidunt on de line; n.o.buddy hurt, but the train'll be seberal hours late. Mr. Gano reckons he'll stay ober at de station till it gits yere."

"Isn't it just like cousin Ethan!" Emmie burst out, when the two blacks had gone. "I don't believe he'll ever come--I don't believe we've got a cousin Ethan!" she wound up, with exasperation.

Partly to rea.s.sure herself, partly to kill time, she went into her grandmother's room and brought back her cousin's latest photograph.

"Don't you sometimes think this is the crossest-looking of any?" she whispered to Val.

"I don't think it's cross--just grave. I hate grinning men."

"I don't want him to grin; but his mouth looks--looks---- Still, I _do_ like his mustache brushed that way, so you can see his lips a little.

And his eyes!--oh! his eyes are beautiful!"