The Open Question Part 54

He was "quite mistaken," she interrupted, drawing herself up, and, to his amazement, receiving the suggestion at the point of the sword. There was nothing wrong with the place. He had his head full of chateaus and palaces. Of course, this was quite an ordinary--

"No, no, it's not the least ordinary. It's picturesque and beautiful; but it--you must see for yourself it's falling to decay."

"Like ourselves, it doesn't get younger; but it naturally suits us better than it can hope to suit you."

He gave up his point for the time being, finding a sudden flaw in his own taste, that could so soon after his arrival suggest that anything here could be changed for the better.

"Come to the upper hall," he said to Val after the mid-day dinner; "help me to unpack, and see if anything I've picked up in my travels will do for a present to Aunt Jerusha."

Val followed him up-stairs, into the seventh heaven. She knew she ought to call Emmie; but why spoil it?

"You never answered my last letter," she said with lowered voice as they reached the landing.

"Didn't I? I'm so sorry. I thought I had. But it's so long ago."

"Not so very."

"About three years. You've rather neglected me of late." He smiled down into her lifted eyes.

"Perhaps I didn't know your new address."

"'Monroe et Cie, 7, Rue Scribe, Paris,' always finds me."

"I thought you told grandma to write direct to the Rue de Provence."

"Ah yes, at one time. I left there a long while ago."

He was unlocking his trunk. Should she tell him about the letter that had evidently got lost? It somehow wouldn't be so easy as she supposed.

And what was the use? Anyhow, here was Emmie trailing up-stairs with a rather downcast face, saying:

"Grandma thought I might come too and see Aunt Jerusha's--"

"Of course; and why not, I'd like to know?" said Ethan, with a welcoming look, as he tumbled his clothes out on the floor. It was awfully interesting--embarra.s.sing, too. What a lot of things he had, for a man!

"I hope he isn't a dandy," thought Val, with a moment's misgiving. As a top-heavy pile of linen and flannel fell against her arm, she was conscious of an odd sense of pleasure, under her shrinking from the contact. It was as if he himself had touched her. Emmie knelt down and gathered up the things, and folded them with her characteristic clumsy helpfulness. These mechanical offices were as far from her limited range of dexterity as the wish to be of service was ever present in her amiable soul.

"Now, this was what I thought might do." He opened a box and took out an Indian silver necklace.

"Just the thing!" cried Val; "how she'll love the dangles!"

"And these for Venus, eh?" He laid down two bangles.

"Yes, yes."

"Think of Venus havin' 'em _both_," murmured Emmie, hanging over them, fascinated.

Val saw there were more silver ornaments in the little box, but Ethan was diving into the trunk again.

"This is what I've brought you," he said, still on one knee over the trunk. He turned and handed them each a little morocco case. A murmur of surprised thanks, a click of opening clasps, and before each girl's eyes gleamed a tiny watch, round which lay coiled a fine little chain.

"Oh, oh, oh!" Emmie dropped a pile of s.h.i.+rts on the floor and danced about. "My initials on the back in pink coral!"

"Mine in turquoise! Oh, how _did_ you know blue was my color?" But Emmie had precipitated herself upon Ethan's bosom and was hugging him wildly.

He was laughing, and crying "Help! help!" And when Emmie desisted, "Help me to throw those clothes back."

They put everything away in wild disorder, except one small package, which he had pocketed.

"Let's go and show our watches to grandma," said Emmie; and they all went down to the long room.

Ethan had his hand on the door-k.n.o.b.

"Oh, we always knock," said Emmie, not too excited even by a gold and coral watch but what she could supply so alarming an omission.

"Come in."

Ethan paused a moment on the threshold while his cousins rushed in. He was thinking how that particular "Come in," aided perhaps by the preliminary formality of a discreet knock (how could he have forgotten!); the unchanged aspect of the big room and its occupant in the queer red chair--how it all gave him back his childhood; gave him back, too, in some indefinable way, his old feeling of being "in the Presence." All the adulation of which he himself had been the object at home and abroad had not changed this. In Paris he was a personage; in the press of two continents he was a respectfully mentioned millionaire; in the select circles of half a dozen capitals he was courted and fawned upon as a great _parti;_ but in the long room he was a va.s.sal, if not still a child. It amused him to think that he humored the notion. Mrs.

Gano had received the deputation smiling, and had put on her spectacles.

But as she examined the watches, while the girls chorused, and Ethan walked about, hands in pockets, looking at the browned engravings, the old woman grew grave.

"These watches are very handsome," she said; "too handsome for little girls."

"Oh _no!_"

"I'm not a little girl," said Val; "I'm--"

"They won't be in keeping, but they are very beautiful."

She was shrivelling up in some unaccountable way.

"I couldn't think," said Ethan, coming forward, "what souvenir I should bring _you_ of France." He drew the package out of his pocket and opened it. "Do you remember how I used to ask you about the French Revolution when I was a child, and all the stories you used to tell me, and how sorry we were for Louis and poor Marie Antoinette? You remember telling me how, when she heard the people were dying for want of bread, she asked, 'Why don't they eat cake?'"

He had opened a box and taken out an enamelled crucifix, from which hung a long chain of small but exquisitely chosen pearls fastened with a jewelled clasp.

"This is something Marie Antoinette wore. I thought you'd like to have it."

"Oh no!" drawing back quickly.

He stared at her. She added, almost nervously:

"I--I never wear jewelry."

"But--but this!" he protested, not a little dashed.

"Why, grandma, you're wearing pearl pins in your veil this very moment,"

said Val.

"They--oh, they are little old seed-pearls; they are nothing. I couldn't think of wearing a costly thing like this." She waved her long fingers towards the chain with an air of distaste. "Such things are not suitable here."