Vesty of the Basins Part 20

"Grace!" cried the sharp little woman at last; "we've some superfluous shawls on board the yacht that would make such charming rugs for Mrs.

Rafe's baby. If Mrs. Rafe could send one of her servants down to the sh.o.r.e to call a man from the boat."

"I'd thend--thend the one with the body," said the young man, still afflicted with wonder at Uncle Benny and myself, and indicating Uncle Benny the more hopefully.

"I prefer the one with the mind," said Mrs. Forrester gravely, snapping a glance at him that was not without meaning. "Why, when you have been drinking too much wine, Cousin Jack, can you not go and sit down in a corner and amuse yourself innocently by yourself as Mr. Garrison does?"

At that Notely looked up and shot at her a long, gay challenge without words: his eyes in themselves seemed to fascinate her, as they did most people; she brightened with a caressing, artistic sense of pleasure in them.

"Well, I like that!" said her cousin, having by this time framed a rejoinder to her question. "Grace and I haven't thpooned anything like you and Note did, thailing down, only you're so deuced thly about it!"

"You are disgusting," said she, too lofty and serene to be annoyed.

I had my hat and was slipping out on my errand to the boat. Vesty, with evident distress, was about to explain: I put my finger to my lips with another side glance of such meaning that she kept still and even smiled again.

I called a man and brought him to the house for Mrs. Forrester's directions. He soon returned with the rugs, which Vesty accepted for her baby as well as she could; Uncle Benny all the time singing gleefully.

The party moved to go; in pa.s.sing through the door Mrs. Forrester dropped her handkerchief. I picked it up and handed it to her.

"Thank you, my poor fellow," she said; "you have the manners of a prince!" and put a coin in my hand--a piece of silver. I took the money.

Vesty was still, after they were gone, her hands over her face. I knew well what thoughts she was thinking.

"Do not go," she said to me, and her voice was like the low cry of her own child; "you are smiling still." She looked at me with strained eyes.

"Well, perhaps because I am glad Mrs. Garrison would not adopt you and take you away from the Basin; perhaps because I am glad no handsome rake will ever ogle you as our lisping young man did Mrs. Notely Garrison."

"It meant nothing between them all," said Vesty, her hand over her eyes; "you know that better than I. It is only the way they do."

"It meant nothing! It is only the way they do."

I put away the violin Notely's fingers had so lately touched. The tears stole down Vesty's cheeks and trembled on her lips.

"He does not care," she said; "that is the worst! He does not care as he did once."

"For what, Vesty?"

"For anything but having a good time and making fun with people, and all that. He used to talk with me--oh, so high and n.o.ble, about things!" Her eyes flashed, then darkened again with pain.

"Ay, I know he has seen the model and been pierced with it. He can never forget; he will come back."

"The model?"

"You know once there was a Master who was determined all his people should paint him a picture after a great model he had set before them.

It seemed not to be an attractive model; it seemed full of pain and loss; the world looked to be full of other designs more desirable.

"So that there were hardly any but that wandered from it, to paint pictures of their own; there was hardly, if ever, a great or a true and patient artist--for they are the same thing.

"Some found the colors at hand so brilliant, and were so possessed with the beauty of dreams of their own, that they spent long years in painting for themselves splendid houses in bewitching landscapes, red pa.s.sion roses, and heaps of glittering gold, that looked like treasures, but were nothing.

"Some painted dark, sad glimpses of earth and sea and sky that were called beautiful, the skill in them was so perfect. Looking at them, one saw only the drear night drawing on.

"But there were some who had no great dreams of their own to work out, or if they had they turned from them with obedience above all: and many, many, broken-hearted from their failure in their own designs, who turned now to follow the Master's model. And it was strange, but as they regarded it intently and faithfully there grew to be in it for them a beauty ever more and more surpa.s.sing all earthly dreams.

"They were dim of sight and trembling of hand; often they mixed the colors wrong, they spilled them, they made great blotches and mistakes; but they washed them out with tears and went to work again, yearning pitifully after the model; in hope or despair, living or dying, their fingers still moved at the task as they kept looking there.

"And always the Master knew. This was the strangest of all, that some of the dimmest, wavering outlines, some of the saddest blotted details, were the beautifullest in his eyes, because he read just the depth of the endeavor underneath; until, in this light, as he lifted it up, some poor, weary, tearful, bungled work shone fairer than the sun!"

Keeping faithful watch of the clock, Uncle Benny at the appointed hour had given up the baby to Vesty, to go and bring the children home from school. We heard him in the distance still singing joyfully his "Sail away to Galilee!"

"There is a faithful artist," I said, and smiled; "would G.o.d I had come up to him, with his unceasing watch over the little ones! And Blind Rodgers too, who never complains, and who will not trouble anybody, but keeps his life so spotless."

Vesty lay very still. "Do you think Notely was painting a picture of his own?" she said. "Do you think I was proud because he could paint such pictures of his own, and wanted him to? You said he had been pierced with it"--she was talking to herself now--"he will come back."

"He will come back."

"Who are you?" she said, her Basin eyes turned clear and full upon me.

"You let them call you my servant!"

"Not because I was afflicted with humility, but because I was proud and happy to be that. And because it was a good joke: you do not mind my enjoying a good joke, I hope? Then you do not know how happy it made me; I have had so much done for me, and have been so little useful."

Vesty was not satisfied. Her clear, impersonal gaze held me with a look fearless of its compa.s.sion, single and direct.

"I wish you would not leave the Basin," she said. "I am never--I am never happy when you are away."

"G.o.d bless you, my little girl!" I said, and hobbled away to finish the housework, but my heart seemed to take on a pair of pure white wings, like dove's wings. I forgot withal that I was lame.

XI

ANOTHER NAIL

"Chipadees sing pretty," said Captain Pharo, drawing a match along the leg of his trousers and lighting his pipe, as we stood amid the song of birds in the lane--"but robins is noisy creeturs, always at the same old tune--poo! poo! hohum! Wal, wal--

[Ill.u.s.tration: Music fragment: "'My days are as the gra.s.s, Or as--'"]

he paused there, having his pipe well going.

"Yes," said I, gulping down some unworthy emotions of my own; "yes, indeed."

"Come down to see ef ye wouldn't like t' go up t' the Point with us, t'

git a nail put in the hoss's shu-u?"

"Oh, yes, thank you! by all means," I replied.

"My woman heered--poo! poo!--

[Ill.u.s.tration: Music fragment: "'Or as the morn-ing flow'r,']