Vesty of the Basins Part 33

"Awful!" said Mrs. Kobbe. Having said which, she put up her piteous little hands to her face and began weeping as if her heart would break.

The captain, like the man that he was, took a strong new tack.

"Never mind, darlin'," said he; "ye've got me, 'n' that 's better to ye 'n all the dagarriers. We'll stompede the blasted thing, 'n' we'll go 'n' have a nice sail home.

"Ef I ever sees or hears or knows," he added to the photographer, "anywheres on the face o' this 'ere wide an' at the same time narrer 'arth, o' any o' these here dagarrier-ructions 't you've played off on me this day, bein' otherwise 'n destriyed, I sh'll take the first fa'r wind up here, an' if thar' ain't no wind I sh'll paddle, an' my settlemunt 'ith you'll be a final one. Good-arternoon."

The captain and his wife strolled down to the beach, arm in arm, Miss Pray and I following, forlorn and forgotten, behind. We saw the captain tenderly pin the shawl about his wife's neck before he left us on the windy wharf, to go out without a murmur to bring in the "Eliza Rodgers."

"How shall we get major down the slip?" I heard Mrs. Kobbe whisper anxiously to Miss Pray.

The "slip" was an inclined plane of boards, of some thirty feet in length, ending in the water; it was without steps or railing, smooth, green with sea-water and slime, and it was, at the present state of the tide, the only way of boarding the "Eliza Rodgers."

The captain now stood in the boat below, holding her to the slip.

Mrs. Kobbe and Miss Pray, leaving me with an encouraging smile, both sat themselves down, and by the simplest means of descent slid safely and swiftly down the incline, amid ringing cheers and acclamation from the wharf.

"Come on, major!" called the captain. "Touch-and-go----"

And I! Where now are my faithful henchmen, the men of mighty stature who do my bidding, the liveried giants who open the door of my carriage? The breeze blew in my face, and the "Eliza Rodgers" waited below, and I heard the rough audience from the wharf shouting that I should be up to that much!

Ay, and far more.

I sat me down with a smile: that strange and swift period of pa.s.sage is still fresh in my memory; how the wind, aided by some slimy intervening objects, turned me completely about, so that I bounded at last with affectionate violence, back foremost, into the enfolding arms of my friends below; cheered, too, from the wharf, especially as, not having been able to make so judicious an arrangement of my earthly vestments as Mrs. Kobbe and Miss Pray had done, I was now a startlingly marked object of ridicule.

Little cared we. That adventure down the slip, ignominious though it was, had put fire into my heart. I entered eagerly into the captain's scheme of hauling and rifling the Millport lobster-traps, in the convenient fog which, as if sent by heaven, hid us for a little s.p.a.ce from the land. The blood of ancestral pirates and robbers bounded hilariously once more in my long-easeful, sluggish veins.

The floor of our boat was covered with bright sea-spoils, the fog lifted, the wind blew fair and strong. Hungry eternally, we munched our stolen fried cakes with delight.

The sun set in a spendthrift glory of state and color, the water was as if translated to celestial climes, languidly the fair moon arose.

And I--forever Vesty's face, in some dream of youth and happiness, outlying my estate; pictured, apart from me, yet new-creating me with joy. Afar off in earth-meadows, the love-note of the thrush--not for me, yet pa.s.sing dear and sweet. That slender, languorous moon pointed me to humble village spires and gra.s.s-grown paths, pale lovers whispering at a rustic gate. I, poor sprite, stooped down and loved and blessed them, though I sped away to sail forever and forever on the seas!

XVIII

UNCLE BENNY SAILS AWAY TO GALILEE

Say the philosophers how, to the properly sane mind, there is no sorrow. But Vesty, only a Basin, fighting Christ's war against the flesh--Vesty had sorrow.

"It was," she confessed to me alone, I being as a ghost or confessor--"it was like pulling my heart out, to have Notely go away so. It was like taking little Gurd away--but it was the only way."

"He has gone back to his wife?"

"Yes." Vesty shivered. I had chanced to meet her in the lane, and the wind was chill.

"And what are you going to do, Vesty?"

"I am going where they want me to help." She held the thin, frayed shawl at her neck, the rosy child wrapped as usual on her arm: "there is always some one wanting me to help, and little Gurd is not so much care now but I can get along with it."

"You go out as general drudge or charwoman!" I felt my nostrils quiver and a bitter harshness in my voice.

Vesty looked at me with surprise. "I go to help," she said, "just as you helped me, with Uncle Benny, when I was sick."

"Oh, I could do"--the child knew not with what a glance I studied her face--"what it is hard to let you do, Vesty."

A gentle pallor at that, as though I had been strong and seemly in her sight; the Basin eyes fixed on me as if with a community of experience and sorrow.

"Shall you go away from the Basin this winter, as you did before?"

"I think so;" for myself, I could not look at her. "You see, I have my--'show,' that I must attend to a little in the winter: and here, exposed to the hard climate, if I were taken ill, or should be in want, there is no one who would care for me, you know."

"You should never want or suffer," cried Vesty of the Basins, "while I have two hands to work with!"

"Perhaps then," I murmured gravely, with sphinx face, "I might stay. I have to ask so much, Vesty, you see. All my life seems to be asking, not giving."

"I don't know who you are!" said she, with puzzled brow, the utter frankness of Basin speech escaping her unawares. "What I thought first, when I saw you--I never mind that now. And you are poor and all alone, and you never make anything of yourself--but somehow I always think you are pretending; somehow--I think--you are stronger than us all."

"You are a little arch-flatterer," I said; "and the Basin, out of its goodness of heart, has made me vain, that is all. It won't do. I need to sweep some more floors and peel some more potatoes." She would not smile; she shook her puzzled head at me. "And, Vesty," I said, "where are you going now?"

"Why, to Uncle Benny's! Didn't you know?" exclaimed the girl eagerly, with whom the realities of life were always pressing, stern. "He stood out in the water, _that day_, helping get the men in, and he was around that evening, singing, without any dry clothes or fire; n.o.body thought, then. And you know he 's had a cough ever since, and now--he 's sick."

A thought smote me. "He won't lead the children to school any more, then?"

Vesty's lip quivered. "Come," she said; "he has asked for you."

At sight of Vesty with her child and me, Uncle Benny, to whom the shadows were coming as to the truly sane, without grief or surprise, touched his unribboned throat with feeble apology.

"I look dreadful," he murmured. That was not troubling him! He had a secret beyond all that, I saw.

"There 's been ten in to call to-day," he exulted sweetly, with folded hands of satisfaction, death's bloom high in his cheeks; "ten!--ahem!--to call."

Vesty looked at me with her sad smile. "It is because we love you, Uncle Benny," she said, "and you took--take such care of the children.

Who?" she asked, for his mind was on it.

"Mother," said Uncle Benny, since he was sane now, "and"--he mentioned a number of the living Basins, and went on, in the same tone--"and Fluke and Gurd."

Vesty looked at him with touching sorrow and despair, being troubled and not sane.

"They played," he said, his hands moving with the recollection of the melody; "they played wonderful--but sometimes it was an organ!"

"Good!" I said, Vesty stood so pale. "We are getting health, I see.

We are on the straight road now."

Uncle Benny, hearing my voice, beckoned me.

"All the things in the drawer!" he said, "because you were 'flicted."