The Open Question Part 104

"See how you've corrupted me. I was just dropping asleep over the play, when the book slipped, and the leaves turned back to the dedication of _Diane_. I read it. Quite suddenly"--she sat up, and her face was pale in the moonlight--"I realized Death. Not merely as a thing that might come to one's grandmother, but.... You see, I had considered it too much to realize it. But there was that dainty Rose Cheri before me.

_She_ had been loved--almost as well as I--"

"No, no." He pressed his lips on hers.

"All those kisses didn't keep the red on Rose Cheri's lips. They turned to evil gray ashes. Her jewel-bright eyes, back they sunk to blackness in their sockets. All that beauty and feeling--all that _feeling_, Ethan--wiped out." The living lovers clung together for a moment. "I suddenly saw," the girl went on, "for the first time in my life, really _saw_, that death wasn't a strange infrequent happening, but that everybody has the face turned that way. Yet, as I sit and tell you about it, the realization slips away--once more it's only words."

"Yes," he said, "that's part of Nature's colossal imposture."

At the word "imposture" she seemed to try to recapture the revelation of the afternoon.

"Dumas is dead," she murmured, looking across the bay from under knitted brows. "He felt all that, and yet he's dead. The beautiful woman and the strong man, they are now as if they'd never been here. Nothing availed them. His genius, her faith, her beauty, their love--futile, futile--they had to go. Were they alive as I'm alive?" She turned suddenly on her lover, in a kind of panic. "Did they feel life so keen a thing as we?"

"No, no; he hadn't you to love."

"Surely it was not like this, or they _could_ not have died." She lay back in his arms and looked up at the full white moon. Presently she smiled. "As I sit here to-night I simply do not believe one little bit in this rumor of death--not as touching me. Other people--yes--only not me."

As she lifted her head from his shoulder and sat up so straight and sure, the man's nerves shrank under a sense of desertion. In a sudden access of physical pride and joyous sovereignty, she seemed to have cast him off, along with Rose Cheri and the rest of that great "nation that is not."

"No one was ever truly alive before," she was saying half to herself, her wide shining eyes turned upward to the stars. "That was why they died. But me--"

"Oh, my darling!" he said, bending towards her, "you are quick in every fibre and in every sense. The wild taste of life has stung your palate, and I sit and wonder how long--how long--" What need to finish, she must understand. But her thoughts were turned another way.

"How long?" She laughed low and joyously. "I've enough life to last as long as the sun has heat to warm the world. I shall go on and on and on." She turned to him with a quick, free movement, and stopped at sight of his face, as though she had been smitten into stone. After a moment she bowed her head down on his knees. They sat motionless. When she raised her head, it was to say: "Never mind, we've come safely so far;"

but her face was bright with tears.

"O life," she said softly, looking upward to the stars, "don't let me die!"

"Are you so happy?" he said, hungering to hear it was for what he brought her she would stay.

"Yes, yes," she said, grasping his hand; "and I'm so hungry for this _being alive_."

He drew his hand away.

"A thousand years," he said, with a kind of anger, "wouldn't quench your curiosity, or weary your quest for joy; but a little sorrow may."

She shook her head dreamily.

"I think my soul must have waited long about the gates of life begging to be let in. I'm so content to be here, so willing to take the rough with the smooth, so grateful for the good--"

"So patient with the wrong," he added, with tender self-reproach, and he gathered her up to his breast.

She laughed, a low laugh, with her face pressed close to his, and he felt forgiven, but the girl was only saying to herself, "To think that I've bothered about--why, it would be grotesque for _me_ to die. There'd be no meaning in it--a kind of violence against Nature and probability that reason revolts at. Everything matters so to me. It's for my sake the sun shines, it is for me the moonlight is mysterious, and the ways of life so many, and so thickly set with adventure."

"You'll admit," she said aloud, at last making ready to go in, "most people have never suspected how good and wonderful the world is--so, plainly, it must be for me (and one or two besides) that it's so fine and terrible a thing to be a dweller in it. Poor world!"--she stopped on the threshold and looked back at the night--"when men rail at you so dully, no wonder you stop their mouths with dust. But for me, I love you. Even when you hurt me I love you--I love you! You'll not get many to bear so good-humoredly with all your wild moods as I--make the most of me. Let me stay a long, long time." And again she went blithely to face death, after the manner of women.

In London and Paris Val made her husband renew his old friendships, and show her that picturesque and holiday side of life so charming to the American woman. Dressed for Lady Eamont's garden-party one day at the end of June, Val stood radiant in her pretty clothes before the long mirror in the drawing-room of her house in Bruton street, waiting for the carriage.

"I feel like a lady on a Watteau fan," she said, rejoicing frankly in the dainty elegance of her Paris frock. "It's all so airy and so cobwebby. Don't breathe hard," she cried, as Ethan bent over her; "a breath will blow me away."

"Are you as happy as you look?" he asked, smiling.

"Happy! I think n.o.body was ever so happy before. I believed I knew how beautiful life was, but I didn't."

She looked out of the open window. It was one of those peerless summer days with which England repays her months of gloom. The white silk curtains waved in the soft air, bringing in wafts of mignonette from the window-boxes. Val threw back her head with the old movement, smiling.

"Yes, it's easy to see," said Ethan to himself, "easy to see what she's thinking."

"I'm glad you're so happy. I was afraid you didn't sleep well last night; you were so restless."

"Was I?" She laughed. "Oh, I suppose I grudge the time I waste in sleep.

There's the carriage."

As the days wore on he lost his fear of p.r.i.c.king the bright bubble of her gladness. The life they led left little time for meditation, and Val's enjoyment of b.a.l.l.s, races, and kindred festivities, gave him an interest in the old round that surprised no one more than himself. He saw it all in a new and tender light, this mask of fair women, leagued in their age-old conspiracy, gliding across ballroom floors, trailing flower-like fabrics over velvet lawns, decorating the tops of coaches, and making of boats up the river floating gardens. There was much art in this determined turning of life into a festival; there might be philosophy, too, in woman's light-hearted begging of the "Question."

If the men tried here and there to wile Val's heart away, why, that was part of the game, and the women certainly did not neglect Val's husband.

"You are so different to most American men," said a certain smart lady who had shown him frank preference.

"Oh," said Gano, "have you known many?"

"Well, several; and you're quite different."

"I am sorry to fall below the standard."

"You don't fall below; you do the opposite."

"You make me wonder about the others."

"Oh, they were all right, but I don't like American men as a rule."

"You must try to keep the awful knowledge from crossing the Atlantic."

"Oh, they know we don't care much for the men."

"I'll tell you what we'll do"--he spoke as one having an inspiration--"we'll kill off all our men if you'll kill off all your women."

She laughed good-humoredly.

"We'd spare the Southerners for your sake; besides, the English have always had a weakness for Southerners. You're more like us. _You_ don't make little set speeches, and you are delightfully quiet and grave."

Ethan burst out laughing.

"One has to come to England to be praised for one's blemishes," he said.

"Blemishes! Do you know the most objectionable thing in the American manner is excessive cheerfulness?"

"You surprise me."