The Open Question Part 85

"Yes." The other nodded to the iron bas-relief above the grate. "The first time I heard father talk about natural law, about lines of least resistance and all kinds of horrors (ante-natal tendencies and the rest), I used to think of Mazeppa, and feel I was being bound on the wild horse of the Past and left to the wolves. But I always knew I should escape. It troubles me when I remember that Aunt Valeria didn't.

And perhaps she sat here with the same faith I have." She gave a little shiver and stood up. "No, no; of course we've been utterly different from the beginning."

"You've changed in the last two years more than anybody I ever knew."

Val turned quickly upon her friend.

"You mean, I'm getting to be like Aunt Valeria?"

"I don't know; I never saw her. But you--you are getting awfully civilized."

She laughed. Val was very grave.

"Do you remember," Julia went on, "your plan of running away to be a chorus-girl?"

"Yes"--the answer rang sharply--"and I would have done it too but that grandma needed me--" She stopped, with a face suddenly fear-stricken.

"It looks as if I _was_ growing like Aunt Valeria"--she walked up and down the room with her head caught between her two hands--"but I'm not--I'm not."

She stopped before Julia, a prey to the feeling that if she allowed Julia to think so she _would_ be like Aunt Valeria. She had the sense of one lying in a trance: that if he does not make a superhuman effort now and protest effectively he will be buried alive. The girl glanced excitedly round the room, and felt the old presence egging her on. It was here that other Valeria had dreamed and tried to work; it was here she faced defeat--here she died, looking out at dawn to the rampart hills that had hemmed them both in beyond escape.

"Don't think I'm the very least like her. I don't want to be a sculptor or a poet, and that's not like Aunt Valeria. I'm not staying here out of respect for any silly old family traditions, nor even because my grandmother needs me. I've been pretending. I'm really staying for Ethan's sake"--her face grew crimson--"_that's_ not like Aunt Valeria."

"For Ethan's sake!" echoed her friend.

"Yes. He made me promise. It's only for a little while I am giving up my music not because I'm growing civilized, as you imagine, but because I shall get something I want more, and that's not like Aunt Valeria. And it doesn't matter who says 'No' to what I want: _I'll have it_--yes, I'll have it in spite of all the angels in heaven and all the demons in h.e.l.l, and _that's_ not like Aunt Valeria!"

Julia, still sitting on the hearth-rug, had leaned forward, and was staring at Val with a curious expression. The crouched-together att.i.tude had caused an envelope the girl had hidden in her bodice to work up to the bit of bare neck revealed by the low-folded fichu. Val fastened sharp eyes upon that part of the familiar gray-blue paper where in Ethan's unmistakable hand she read as much of Julia's last name as "tway." Val's fixed stare made the other look down. Two guilty hands flew to her breast.

"Will you let me see that letter?" said Val.

"No."

"You must. I've told you my secret."

"I didn't ask you to."

Julia got up.

"There's something in it you're ashamed to show," said Val.

"Not at all."

"How long have you been corresponding with Ethan?"

"You've no right to cross-question me. I'm going home."

She moved to the door, and turned as she put her hand on the k.n.o.b to say good-bye. The word died on her lips as she saw Val's face. Before Julia quite realized what was happening, the other had leaped upon her like a young panther, and was tearing away the fichu at her neck. A short struggle, and the letter was dragged out of its hiding-place. Val tore open the door and fled down-stairs, out across the back and round the wooden L, in at the side-porch, through the kitchen, crying to Jerusha, "Don't tell Julia where I am!" up the back-stairs, and into an unused room opening onto the long hall. She locked herself in, and sat down in the dim light. Every pulse in her body was thumping like a stamp-mill.

She slipped onto her knees before the shrouded window, and with quivering hands took out of the crumpled envelope several sheets of thin blue Irish linen-paper closely written.

"Oh, longer than any of mine!" she wailed, in her sore heart.

But, stop! it wasn't all one letter. A little note was to apologize to "Dear Miss Julia" for not answering her two former "charming letters,"

and to decline with many thanks the Otways' kind invitation to come and visit them.

"The audacity! To visit _them_ indeed!"

His excuse was the pressure of political engagements.

"She had to write _two_ charming letters to get this."

But the postmark was the capital of the State. He was less than two hours away! The other--the long communication--lacked the first page, according to the numbering. She turned to the broken sentence at the beginning:

"... realized I was rather too notoriously a 'rich man' to stand much chance of election, but I was at least a man who could _afford_ to be defeated, and yet go on doing his level best to serve his country. I started in, believing that the way to serve her best was by being a Republican and a Sound Money man. It was all very well to say my own private interests lay along that line; I believed the public interest did as well. But I was not satisfied to be 'run' in blinders by an agent or a committee, pledged to see nothing but party advantages, pledged to controvert opposing opinions, however sound or unforeseen. I couldn't help seeing the other side. That's my special curse, by the way, and will stand forever between me and effective action. I have been about among the working-cla.s.ses and the idle poor. I took n.o.body's word. I investigated for myself the trades-unions, the various political and industrial organizations. I looked into Pullman patriarchal tyranny and into Carnegie despotism, and recalled the more humane, more _democratic_, att.i.tude of masters to men in the effete monarchies abroad. Here, in free America, tyranny stalks naked and unashamed. The employment of politics for mere private gain, the abuse of patronage, and in business the war of extermination waged by trusts and combines--everywhere the right of moneyed might, the rich playing into the hands of the rich while pretending to serve the people--all this opened my eyes. I have just come from Ironville. The strike is not going to be settled so easily, although the suffering is appalling. The masters mean to starve the men to death; the men mean to blow the masters to atoms. This is the _union_ I find in my native land--this the new free brotherhood of men. Sharks devouring little fishes!

"What with lawless greed on one side and lawless need on the other, the outlook frowns. The question of the future isn't silver versus gold, it isn't Republican against Democrat, nor North against South, nor East against West, but human dignity and decency against capitalist slave-drivers and despoilers of the poor. _You_ know the spirit of fervor and of patriotism that carried me into the campaign. I tell you I'm sick with disillusionment.

"I am far more afraid of being elected than of facing defeat. I have learned that these measures I proposed in such good faith are half-measures foredoomed to failure. Give me, if you can, some good reason to believe that this great and prosperous America is not like to become the devil's drill-ground. Yours very sincerely,

"ETHAN GANO."

"Well, of all the funny letters for a man to write a girl!"

_Julia_ give him a reason! Julia setting herself up as understanding politics! To be sure, she was two years older than Val, and was always seeing her father's political friends; but that didn't account for....

It came over her how little one woman knows the side another woman turns to men. It must be immensely flattering to have a "politician" writing to her on terms of equality. Oh yes, Julia must be enormously uplifted.

Val was sure of it by the heaviness that weighed _her_ down. Julia, no doubt, had "studied up" in order to share Ethan's interests on a side that Val and other girls couldn't reach.

As she came out of her hiding-place she was concocting in her mind a letter which the servant should carry over to Julia with the confiscated correspondence.

Her excitement had died down, leaving for the moment a dead weight of wretchedness. Ethan's letters to her had seemed before so full and satisfactory, even her hungry curiosity had felt no want in them that a letter could supply. For even the love he did not put into words seemed not only implicit in every line of each "enclosure," but more subtly delicious being veiled. His letters had filled up the empty s.p.a.ces in her life, seeming to carry her along step by step through his. But if there was all this besides which he cared to write to Julia, what more might there not be in a life so full and varied as his? How had she been so blind, so easily content? It was years since they had said good-bye.

Wasn't nearly every novel in the world a warning against believing that men remembered long the girl who was out of sight? No doubt, what she had dimly feared had happened at Long Branch last summer--Julia had improved the shining hour.

Val went wearily down the long hall, feeling that all the zest had gone out of existence forever. She stopped to lean against the last window at the head of the back-stairs. Looking out, she saw to her surprise that Julia was sitting on the terrace under the crooked catalpa-tree. Ah, she couldn't go and leave that precious letter behind! Val went down to her with angry-beating heart. The other girl, leaning back against the tree, watched with sullen eyes the slow approach. She had wrapped the torn fichu up close about her throat. Something in Julia's handsome impa.s.sivity stirred the other to a rage, more becoming had she not been the arch offender. She dropped the crumpled envelope into Julia's lap.

"I congratulate you on being able to hold up your end of such a weighty correspondence."

"Is that all you have to say after leaping at me like a wild-cat and taking what didn't belong to you?"

"Oh, you're waiting here for me to apologize?"

Julia got up slowly.

"I never thought _you_ would do such a dishonorable thing!"

"It wasn't dishonorable. You and I were '_best_ friends.' I had just given you my whole confidence. You owed it to me to be as frank with me.

I took what belonged to me."

"And I say that if you broke into our house and stole the silver, you couldn't be more of a thief than you are this moment."