The Open Question Part 91

"Give her a rub down and a feed, and say nothing about it," said Gano, transferring something from his pocket to the man's hand. "For the sake of battles long ago," he added to his companions, seeming to apologize.

As they walked up to the hotel Mrs. Ball ran on volubly about the ill-treatment of animals.

"I like to remember some magnificent thoroughbreds I saw the last time I was in Holland," Ethan said in the first pause. "I fell in with their owner afterwards, a certain Monsieur Oscar."

"That the fellow that trains horses?" asked Wilbur.

"Yes, founder of the Continental Cirque. He'd been all over the world, and was giving his last performance while I was at Scheveningen. When I came across him afterwards, he had sold all the animals and properties of his great show. 'All,' he said, 'except my eight favorite horses.' I asked if he was going to keep them. 'No,' he said; 'I shot them after my last performance. I might have sold them well, but I thought perhaps they might come down in the world, and end by going between shafts. No, I cared about 'em, so I shot 'em.'"

"Oh, how could he have the heart!" Mrs. Ball was shocked.

"You should have seen the fellow's face! He had cared. I couldn't help thinking what a lot of room there was in the world for that kind of caring."

"Gracious no, it's too brutal! He should have given them to people who would appreciate them."

"As Mr. Joicey does Blue Gra.s.s? You've heard of General Boulanger's celebrated black charger--he's a cabhorse now in Paris. Marshal Canrobert's splendid animal is in the Pasteur Inst.i.tute at Garches, where it is used for the production of serum. Saint-Claude, too, the winner of the Grand Steeplechase at Auteuil in '90, he's there being experimented upon. No, dear Mrs. Ball, there seems to be just one safe asylum for horses as for men. h.e.l.lo, there! did you get my telegram?" he called out briskly to the hotel-keeper. "Gano--luncheon for four."

In a moment he seemed to have the entire staff of the place bustling about him, waiters throwing open the windows at his complaint of closeness, putting fresh flowers on the table laid for the _partie carree_, deaf to the appeals of the few other people in the big dining-room, the landlord praying Mr. Gano to remember that he was nearly half an hour before the time.

"Do they know him?" Mrs. Ball whispered to Wilbur.

"Must; or why should they take all this trouble?"

Val smiled to herself, believing it superfluous to dive into her cousin's pocket for the reason; it was there in his face, in his air. It was so, she told herself, that princes walked the world, barriers going down before them, and people vying to do them unasked service. Yes, it was not for nothing she had dreamed about the prince.

The luncheon was a distinct success. It soon became evident that Ethan was making great headway with Mrs. Ball. Her vivacity, and his unwonted responsiveness, had kept the ball rolling merrily. Was he making himself so agreeable, Val began to wonder, that he might be surer of a welcome in West Walnut Street? "Jessie Ball is bent on impressing Ethan,"

thought the pitiless young observer. "She's growing quite affected"; and she watched her hostess coldly. It seemed to Val a part of Mrs. Ball's desire to play up to some imagined standard of extra punctilio that led her, towards the end of the meal, to pa.s.s her purse to Harry under the table, while Ethan wasn't looking, forming with her lips the words "I'm hostess." Val's sense of embarra.s.sment was acute. Ethan wouldn't like it, after ordering things himself. Val knew, too, that if her cousin had not been a rich man, Mrs. Ball's breeding would have appeared better.

She would not have troubled about the bill.

Ethan's later amazement when he called for the account, that there should be a discussion as to who should pay for the repast he had ordered, made Val want to get under the table. By so much was she relieved at his giving way before Mrs. Ball's shrill insistence.

"Oh, very well, if it pleases you better so." He jumped up to cut the discussion short. "Send it out after us. And when will you have the horses--in half an hour?"

Mrs. Ball was uncomfortably conscious that her fine straw-colored hair had come out of curl in the wind, there, under the trees. With the indomitable spirit of woman in pursuit of beauty, she was determined to borrow the chambermaid's tongs, and restore the fuzziness with which she had started forth. It was essential, therefore, that she should take time as well as herself by the forelock. She hurried Val up-stairs.

"What a fascinating man!" she said, with a sigh, as she stood before the gla.s.s. "Val, dear, I hope you won't lose your heart to Mr. Gano."

"Oh, I've got past that," said the girl, with a misleading air of frankness.

"Well, I'm relieved to hear you say so. There's something about him very magnetic to my way of thinking--positively irresistible." She sighed again. "But he'd make a shocking bad husband, that's one comfort."

"_Comfort!_" Val laughed a little hysterically.

"Well, now, what _have_ I said?"

But Val was hatted and gloved, and ran down-stairs. Ethan was smoking in the porch.

"Where are those funny friends of yours?" he said.

She was up in arms at once.

"You always say my friends are funny."

"And so they are, dear child."

"They're not a bit funnier than my relations."

"Oh, they don't compare."

"How long before the horses will be ready?" said Val, loftily, as one who chafes at a delay, making meanwhile a rapid calculation as to how long Mrs. Ball's work of restoration might be counted on to keep her up-stairs.

"They'll be here presently," said Ethan, throwing away his cigarette.

"Let's go and see." Val led the way round to the back of the hotel. "My friends are perfectly delightful, but I don't mean to let them monopolize every minute of our time."

He looked at her with an odd expression, and then turned away his face.

Her heart gave a great leap. They went on to the stable. Wilbur was there. The buckle on Gano's saddle-girth, he said, had got bent. While it was being taken off Ethan moved about, looking in sheds and open doors.

"What are you hunting for?" Val called after him.

"A place for you to sit down. They'll be some minutes repairing that thing."

"You'd better go back to the house," said Wilbur, who was showing the man how to get the metal straight without breaking the tongue of the buckle.

"No," said Val; "I shall go in there, and up those cobwebby stairs, and sit on the hay by the door that opens into mid-air."

As she walked towards the barn-door it seemed to her that her whole existence depended upon whether Ethan followed her.

At the door she turned, and saw him looking after her. Then she went in. Was he coming? oh, was he, _was_ he? She began to mount the stair, but her heart seemed to stay down there on the bottom step. She wouldn't look back again, but there was no sound, no sign. It was not overwhelmingly important to _him_ to see her alone. She felt the hot tears stinging her eyes. Then the suns.h.i.+ne that streamed into the musty place through the open half of the double door--suddenly it was darkened. She knew it was Ethan on the threshold. He came after her up the narrow seed-strewn stair, that had no banister.

"Don't walk so near the edge," he said, and he came on the outside, pus.h.i.+ng her a little towards the inner wall.

They went up side by side, the girl quite silenced by the sense of his nearness. She half held her breath, expecting every second he would say something--something that for her would be momentous. When they had reached the loft, and he had not opened his lips, a disappointment swept over her so acute it was almost humiliation. She waded heavily through the hay to the open door, that looked out on the horses and the group below.

"I can't think what I am to say about this visit, when I get home," she said. "It seems as impossible to tell them I've been seeing you as it does not to say so."

"When must you go?"

He accepted it, then. No crying out against her going, but merely "when." She turned away from the open door, where she could see Mrs.

Ball just arrived on the scene making her a sign, and she steadied herself an instant with her hand against the wall in the shadow. The close smell of the hay choked her. Was it like this people felt before fainting? "Oh, why did I come?" she heard herself saying. And then, instead of losing consciousness, an electric sense of life and joy spread through all her body. Ethan's fingers had closed about her hand that had hung so limp at her side. There must have been some virtue in him, for at the touch she was whole again.

"Don't be sorry you came," he said.

"Mustn't I?"

She tried to subdue her gladness.

"No; even though parting is more than I have courage to face."