The Open Question Part 80

He turned away, cursing his traitor tongue.

"I've imposed upon you," he said, after a moment, flinging himself down on the gra.s.s a little distance off--"imposed upon you frightfully, if I've made you believe that. I'm far enough from being even master of myself."

"Too late to try to patch it up now," she said; "the murder's out."

He studied her.

"I suppose you think you know me?"

She smiled confidently.

"You don't. I'm compounded of all the things that are most abhorrent to you."

Still she smiled. The unconscious pa.s.sion in the young eyes warmed his blood like wine. He moved a little nearer to her, and the mere movement broke the spell. The physical obviousness of the action stung him into self-criticism, self-contempt; and then as he turned his face away from his cousin's magnet eyes, he fell to criticising his self-criticism. Why couldn't he take things simply, naturally, as Val did? Vain ambition! He must submit to seeing, always and always, the skeleton under the fair flesh, the end from the beginning.

"You are mistaken about me," he said. "I look out upon a world eternally different from the world you see."

"What's it like?"

"I hope you'll never quite realize."

"Oh, I shall; but I sha'n't mind."

"I might be doing you the best service in my power if I gave you a notion of how _much_ you'd mind."

"I give you leave."

He looked into the tender, happy eyes, and, "I haven't the heart," he said. "After all, it may not be necessary for you to lower your opinion of the world. It will, perhaps, do if you merely modify your opinion of me."

"Don't you see I can't do that?"

"Oh yes, you can." He pulled himself together and sat up. "You're at bottom such a rational creature. You've only to realize I'm a dreadful fraud. I've talked about--you'd be sure to find me out some time, so I may as well make a clean breast of it--"

"It isn't anything you've ever _said_, that I depend upon."

"Oh, really!"

He threw back his head and laughed.

"It's partly just the look of you, but it's most of all just--just that I'm certain no one in the world is so kind and brave--"

"I brave! You poor child!"

"Yes, and kind, deep down to the core," she said, with beaming eyes. "I know it by your voice, and by the way you feel everybody else's feeling. That's something like me: I feel, too, but it doesn't make me kind."

"Neither does it me. I'm a ma.s.s of deception. I put on a solemn look, and you think I'm sympathizing. I'm not: I'm actively engaged in despising the universe."

"That's because your standards are so high."

He laughed out an ironic "_Exactly!_"

"You make other people seem about so high." She held an out-stretched hand a few inches above the gra.s.s, dropped it, and, leaning forward upon it, said, with a quick-drawn breath: "It's been so exciting for us all here, knowing you. It's been like knowing Robert Bruce or Richard Coeur de Lion--"

"Oh, very like Richard Coeur de Lion especially."

"Just what _I_ say, particularly when you put on that black look and your eyes burn. I know then you'd have the courage for _anything_!"

The whimsical amus.e.m.e.nt died out of his face.

"I told you I'd taken you in. I'm a mortal coward!"

"_You?_"

He nodded, looking off down the ravine.

"I'm afraid of death. I'm even more afraid of life."

They were only obscure phrases in her ears.

"I know you're afraid of the dark," she said, smiling gently, "but only when I'm not there. You see--I must be there."

"Poor little cousin! Lucky for you that Fate and your father have settled that you can't be 'there.'"

"I settle things for myself," she said, hotly; "and _don't_ call me little cousin."

"Why not?"

"It seems to cut me down to childhood. Besides"--she stood up--"I'm really very tall, and I've heard enough about being a cousin."

"You hardened optimist!" He lay on his back with his hands clasped behind his head, and looked up at the tall, slight figure of the girl.

"You're actually ready to pit yourself against the laws of the universe, and expect not to suffer for it. Do you know that your invincible belief that _you_, at least, were meant to be happy, is the most pathetic thing I've found in the world?"

"I'm not in the very least pathetic," she said, with deep indignation.

"Shouldn't wonder if it would be always like that with you," he went on, unmoved. "Stark inability to comprehend personal misfortune! Ruin will rattle about your ears--you'll believe blindly it's somehow for the best. How like life's diabolical ingenuity that just the man I am should have come across just the girl you are!"

"Thank you, most particularly. Life and I are both obliged."

"Of course, you've read that last will and testament--the one your father wrote--"

"No; haven't asked for it. Grandma hasn't mentioned it."

"Ah! She probably would if she knew--"

"You may be sure," Val interrupted, "my father doesn't think those hideous black thoughts now."

"Ah, yes, I'm sure enough of that."

"You are?"