Читать книгу The Open Question: A Tale of Two Temperaments - Elizabeth Robins - Страница 11

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In spite of Ethan's somewhat heathen faith in the power of Yaffti, and the efficacy of rites and spells, he was a true Gano, in that he early developed a deep concern about Christianity. During the stately strolls after supper with his grandmother, he propounded many a question which so taxed that practised theologian that she was fain to turn the conversation by quoting a question-begging beatitude, or saying loftily the subject was beyond little boys. But if, like Dr. Johnson on the immortality of the soul, she sometimes left the matter in obscurity, she had a Bible quotation ready for every conceivable emergency in life. Her ingenuity in wresting from the stern old Scripture humane and cheerful counsel, fit for the infant mind of a conscience-plagued Gano, discovered how true was her comprehension of his fears, and how much wiser her teaching all unconsciously was than that of the creed she would have died for. Her own spiritual development had never for a moment been arrested. She had travelled farther than she was quite aware, since the days when she had allowed her young children to be tormented by the fears of a fiery hereafter. She soon discovered that the Presbyterian Tallmadges had done their best to plant the Calvinistic evil in the sensitive mind of her grandson, and, without misgiving, she proceeded to root it out.

"I don't see how anybody can feel sure they're going to be saved," the child said, with deep anxiety, one Sunday evening.

"Such thoughts are a temptation of the Evil One. 'O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?'"

"But how do I know I'm not one of those He meant when He said, 'Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?'"

"Because our Saviour distinctly says it of that generation—centuries ago—of rebellious and unbelieving Jews."

"Oh-h!" He was only half reassured.

She paused on the gravel walk and looked down at him. His little grave face was upturned in the twilight, his great eyes darkened by a world of care, but he looked so very fragile withal, such a tender little baby, that she felt her lips twitching at his anxiety lest he should be the viper of the Lord's denunciation. In another moment her unaccustomed eyes were strangely wet, and she walked on with averted face.

"I can't help wondering often," the child pursued, with evident heaviness of spirit, "how I shall manage to be a profitabubble servant."

"A what?"

"Well, not like the unprofitabubble servant that had to be cast into outer darkness, where there was weeping and gnashing—"

"Nonsense! all that has nothing to do with you! He said, 'Suffer little children to come unto Me.'"

"You think, if I died now, I'd go to heaven?"

"Of course you would. All little children go to heaven."

"All children who aren't too wicked," corrected Ethan, gravely, with misgiving.

"There is no such thing as a wicked child," interrupted his mentor, impatiently; then, catching herself up—"They may be foolish and wayward"—she looked down on him sternly—"and they may have to be severely punished on this earth, but they don't know enough to be wicked, not enough to deserve being shut out of heaven."

"I've heard Grandfather Tallmadge say somebody—I think it was some saint—had seen"—he lowered his voice—"had seen an infant in hell, a span long." He shuddered.

"Nonsense!" retorted Mrs. Gano, angrily. "No saint ever saw anything of the sort—nor no sane creature. It was that John Calvin."

"Oh! and you think perhaps he—"

"He didn't know what he was talking about. He had a black, despairing mind, and is the only human creature who ever had any valid excuse for being a Calvinist."

"Oh!"

"I suppose they've not neglected in Boston to tell you there is such a thing as 'the unpardonable sin'?"

The ironic intonation was lost on Ethan.

"Oh no," he said, with the animation of one who recognizes an old friend; "Grandfather Ta—"

"Now, never forget that the only unpardonable sin is to doubt the mercy of God."

"Then you think that when the end of the world comes—"

"I think," she interrupted, with a lyrical swell in her voice as she remembered the prophet's vision—"I know, that 'the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joys upon their head; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.' And now we've had enough of that for to-night," she ended, with an abrupt change of voice and style.

Oddly enough, she was not so likely to close the subject in this summary fashion if the evening talk fell upon Ulysses, or Peter the Great, or General Lee. It was sometimes Aunt Valeria who had to remind them of Ethan's bedtime, if the topic had chanced to be the Civil War, or any one of the legion of family stories of Calverts or Ganos and their doings in the South. There was Ephraim Calvert, who had fought for the King in 1774, and when he died had left his curse and his red coat for "a sign" to his rebellious sons, who had fought for independence. There was that cousin Ethan Gano, who had lost his right hand, and yet was such a famous shot and swordsman with his left that no man dared stand up against him. He had made a fortune in the India trade, by chance, as it were, for he never really cared for anything but sword and pistol practice, and would be always talking of feats of arms, even to parsons and Quakers. "Just as that other boaster, Byron," Mrs. Gano would wind up, "was forever telling how, like Leander, he had swum the Hellespont, and took more credit to himself for being able to snuff out a candle with a pistol-shot at twenty paces than for being able to write Childe Harold. But that was not only because he was a poet," she would add meditatively over Ethan's head: "it was the direct result of inordinate vanity and a club-foot. Just as Ethan Gano would never have been a crack swordsman if he hadn't been one-armed as well as worldly."

Among the minor advantages of life in New Plymouth was that a boy didn't come in for a scolding here if he went without his cap. In common with many children, Ethan hated head-gear of all kinds, and yet fully expected to be scolded, on strict Boston principles, the first time he was discovered hatless out-of-doors. Valeria, wearing a wide shade-hat, and Mrs. Gano, with a green-lined umbrella, came unexpectedly upon him one hot noon-day as he sat reading bareheaded in the scorching sun on the terrace steps.

"How like his father that child is!" said Mrs. Gano, stopping and looking at him as though she saw, not him at all, but another boy.

"Don't you want your hat?" asked Aunt Valeria.

"No," said Ethan, gathering courage. "I—I like the hot sun."

"Isn't that like Shelley?" said Aunt Valeria in the same way that Mrs. Gano had remarked on the likeness to Ethan's father. "If his curly hair wasn't cropped so close, his little round head would be exactly like—"

"What are you reading?" interrupted his grandmother.

"I'm studying," answered Ethan, self-righteously, and he held up his French grammar.

"Don't you do enough of that in school?" said Mrs. Gano, with what seemed strange lack of appreciation in a grandmother.

"They expect me to do some work in the holidays."

"Oh, they do, do they?"

She turned away indifferently, as if to continue her walk, glancing sharply down in that familiar way of hers at the clover fringing the path.

"Do you think I needn't study?" The child had jumped up and joined them as they walked round the house. "You see, I hate doing it most awfully."

"Not 'awfully.'"

"Yes, really, especially être and avoir; but grandfather says—"

"I notice you use that word 'awfully' a great deal. Do you know what it means?"

Ethan preserved an embarrassed silence.

"Awful means that which inspires awe. Now, your feeling about French grammar does not inspire awe. French is all very well, but it's a good thing sometimes to consider your English. You couldn't have a better task than that in the holidays."

"Shall I carry your coat?" said the child, willing to change the topic, and laying his hand on the thin wrap she had on her arm.

"This," said his grandmother, with the Tallmadge insistence on French still rankling, apparently—"this is not a 'cut,' as you call it; and that person approaching is not walking in the 'rud.' You are losing some of your twang, but thy speech still bewrayeth thee. Perhaps learning to talk like a Gano, since you are one, would be a fitting task for the holidays here. Say 'co-o-at.'" He repeated the word in a shamefaced way. "Now 'road.' Yes, that's right." She drew back suddenly and faced about. "Some one's coming in!" she whispered, hurriedly, as who should say "An enemy is at the gate."

She stalked behind the house with Ethan at her side, while Aunt Valeria went forward and greeted the visitor.

"Why, it's the same gentleman who has been here twice before," Ethan observed, looking back.

"Are you sure?" said Mrs. Gano, stopping short. "Was that Tom Rockingham again?"

"I don't know his name," answered Ethan, wondering what awful sin Tom Rockingham could have committed.

"Little, insignificant-looking man?" demanded his grandmother.

"He wasn't very big," admitted the child. "It's the one that walked home from church, as far as the corner, with Aunt Valeria and me last Sunday."

"Upon my word!" she ejaculated. "Has Tom Rockingham begun that?"

"I didn't hear his name."

"A man"—she made a gesture of contempt—"very careless about his linen?"

"I didn't notice."

"—without gloves? Hands rather grimy—"

"Aunt Valeria said he was a great scholar."

"A great fiddlestick! Of course it's Tom Rockingham."

This was evidently a most exciting character, and in any case it was pleasant to have a visitor who didn't merely leave cards and go away, as all the others did.

"Aren't we going in to see him?"

"No, certainly not, unless he stays too long."

She threw back her head in that way of hers. They walked up and down the back veranda in silence, Ethan as well aware as if she had poured forth torrents that his grandmother's ire was growing with every moment. Presently she dropped his hand, and going to the door, she called, in an unmistakable tone:

"Valeria!—Valeria!"

"Yes, mother, in a moment," came from the direction of the parlor.

Mrs. Gano waited for some seconds with sparkling eyes, then:

"Valeria, I have called you!"

Ethan was hot and cold with excitement.

"Run away and play," said his grandmother, her gleaming eyes falling on a sudden upon the child. She turned sharply and went in-doors, leaving Ethan to wonder which she was going to kill—Tom Rockingham or Aunt Valeria. He stood quite still, waiting for developments. At last, unable to bear the combined suspense and solitude any longer, he pulled the Duchess out from the cool shade under the veranda, and sat down with her on the step.

Presently Aunt Valeria came out of the parlor and went up-stairs. He didn't see her face.

With a vague, frightened feeling, he got up with the Duchess in his arms and walked away.

Mr. Rockingham never came again, and the only reference ever made to him was weeks afterwards, when the summer was waning, and he passed by the house one evening without a word, without a pause, taking off his hat to the ladies who sat in the dusk on the front porch.

"Who is that?" Mrs. Gano asked her daughter.

"Mr. Rockingham."

"Humph!" remarked Mrs. Gano.

Aunt Valeria said nothing.

Ethan laid his cheek against her slim, white hand. But she didn't seem to him to know or to care for a little boy's sympathy. It was natural, he thought, that he should care so much more for these relations than they did for him. The holidays were ended—so Grandfather Tallmadge had written—and a French boy, a kind of cousin, had come to live at Ashburton Place and go to school with Ethan. "So now he would have a playmate," Aunt Hannah had added, as a postscript. Ethan didn't want a playmate, and he was horribly shy of a boy who knew French by a superior instinct. But to-morrow he was to go back to Boston. No help for it.

Many letters on this subject had been written; it was all no use. He had to go, and his grandmother's eyes were angry when the subject was mentioned, and his own heart heavy and sore in his breast. Aunt Valeria had never said anything, but she was even kinder to him after the decision, especially at dusk, when one felt dreary. Mrs. Gano would seldom allow even the hall lamp to be lighted in the summer evenings, probably from motives of economy; but this reason was never given for any mandate except under great pressure. The ostensible end served by sitting in the dusk and groping one's way up-stairs, or being beholden to the moon for acting as the domestic candle, was that if darkness reigned mosquitoes and miller-moths were not attracted into the house; neither were those great winged things with horns, that one never saw in Boston, which fact would have compensated Ethan for endurance of the dark if anything could. In the moments preceding bedtime, the firefly had been a distinct consolation. That very morning he had hid Aunt Valeria's empty cut-glass camphor-bottle under the syringa-bush, and now was the time to try the experiment of bottling a few fireflies and seeing how they lightened their captivity. He sallied forth into the scented dusk, whistling softly. His plan worked wondrous well. With each new victim his spirits mounted higher, he thinking—poor deluded soul!—that he should never again feel downhearted in the dusk. He had caught and imprisoned over a dozen of these winged lamps, when Aunt Valeria came through the bushes, calling softly:

"Ethan! Ethan!"

"Yes; here I am."

He concealed her camphor-bottle as well as he could under his jacket, but the bottle was big and the jacket was small.

"Bedtime," called the voice.

"Just a few more fire—I mean minutes."

"No; your grandmother says it is past the time."

"Oh, dear! then I s'pose it is." He came out of his covert, and on a sudden impulse added, hurriedly: "Aunt Valeria, do you care about your camphor-bottle?"

"Care about it?"

"Yes; do you mind if there's fireflies in it instead of camphor?"

He held it up, and the captives lit their pale lamps and fluttered despairingly.

"Oh, my dear! they'll die."

"No; they like it. It's such a beautiful bottle."

"But you've got the glass stopper in; they can't breathe."

In spite of his entreating, she took out the stopper, and put the end of her lace scarf over the opening.

"You won't take it away from me?"

"No, no," she said, gently leading him back to the front porch, repeating as she went: