Part 72 (1/2)

”Consumption.”

Ethan sat looking at him in silence. Val half rose. She must let them know she was there. But--consumption! She sank down. Was it true _that_ was the ghost that haunted the Fort? Certainly it was true that she had never heard the word on the lips of her elders.

”My father and my wife died of it,” John Gano was saying. ”My mother has the old lingering form of it. It was 'galloping consumption' that carried my sister Valeria out of the world at thirty. I am dying of it.

My children--”

A curious hoa.r.s.e sound tore its way out of his throat, and he buried his head in his hands. When he looked up his eyes were wild and bright. Val held her breath, and the nails of her clinched hands dug into her palms.

”I have just one hope,” her father said, ”that my innocent children will go out as painlessly as may be, before the great battle begins.”

Val drew back, crouching behind the chair-back with blanched face.

”It is too late to hope that,” said Ethan.

”No, it's not too late; the enemy is still in ambush.”

”The enemy?”

”Yes. The battle won't begin till s.e.x finds them out.”

”What then?”

”Then they will have to be told what I was not told in time.”

”What would you say?”

”I”--the hoa.r.s.e voice shook--”I'd tell them how full of holes their armor is.”

”Uncle John, you'll never be so cruel.”

Val, behind the big chair, lifted her scared face in the shadow, looking on as a woman might at a duel fought for her.

”It is the only kindness. When I thought I shouldn't live to see them old enough to know, I wrote the matter down. Ha!”--he laughed wearily--”in the form of a last will and testament; a legacy from a father who will leave them nothing else except--” He got up and turned away, coughing. He walked up and down the room again, with dragging step and bent head. He stopped suddenly and laid his hand on the young man's shoulder. ”I see too plainly the lesson of the past not to hand my knowledge on. It's all I'm good for now. This fair future for the race that I've believed in, that I've foreseen so long--” He was interrupted by the painful cough, but conquered it an instant. ”Not only have I always known I could have no personal share in it, not even through my children--”

The cough gripped him again, and he turned away with handkerchief to his lips.

Ethan watched him, unmoved, with a kind of unsympathetic fascination.

”I think,” said the young man, before his uncle found his voice again, ”you are going on to say something I had to try to disabuse my mind of, years ago, when my own health smashed up before I went to France.”

John Gano dropped into the rocking-chair by the fire, and lay back a moment with closed eyes and laboring breath.

”I didn't know,” he said, faintly, ”that you'd had your warning, but I see”--he opened his eyes suddenly--”I see that your New England blood is too thin, too office-stricken, to save you. You've nothing--absolutely nothing to hope for from the Gano side.” His voice was strong. It rang like a challenge. ”My mother is wrong! Our fathers _have_ eaten sour grapes.”

Ethan leaned forward about to speak, but his uncle broke in harshly:

”I tell you you belong to a worn-out race. _We_ are among those who are too remote from the soil--'there is no health in us.'”

”Oh come, Uncle John, don't talk as if we were Aztecs, or an effete monarchy.”

”We _are_ effete, and we deserve to die out root and branch.”