Vesty of the Basins Part 2

"Hohum!" began Elder Cossey, with wholly devout intentions--"we thank Thee that another week has been wheeled along through the sand, about a foot deep between here and the woods, and over them rotten spiles on the way to the Point, and them four or five jaggedest boulders at the fork o' the woods--I wish there needn't be quite so much zigzagging and shuffling in their seats by them 't have come in barefoot afore the Throne o' Grace," said Elder Cossey, suddenly opening his eyes, and indicating the row of sculpins with distinct disfavor.

"Yes," he continued, "we've been a-straddlin' along through troublements and trialments and afflickaments, hanging out our phiols down by the cold streams o' Babylon, and not gittin' nothin' in 'em, hohum!"

Vibrating thus mysteriously, and free and unconfined, between exhortation and prayer, Elder Cossey finally merged into a recital of his own weakness and vileness as a miserable sinner.

And here a strange thing happened. A brother who had been noticing the winks and smiles cast broadly about, and thinking in all human justice that Elder Cossey was getting more than his share, got up and declared with emotion, that he'd "heered some say how folks was all'as talkin'

about their sins for effex, and didn't mean nothin' by it, but I can say this much, thar ain't no talkin' for effex about Brother Cossey; he has been, and is, every bit jest as honest mean as what he 's been a-tellin' on!"

Elder Skates arose, trembling. "Vesty," said he, with unnatural quickness of tone; "will you start 'Rifted Rock'?"

The blue, handsome eyes were on her mercilessly--she was suffocating besides with a wild desire to laugh, her breath coming short and quick.

She gave one agonized look at Brother Skates, and then, lifted her eyes to the window.

The clouds were sad and grand; there was a bird flying to them.

She fixed her eyes there, and her voice flowed out of her:

"'Softly through the storm of life, Clear above the whirlwind's cry, O'er the waves of sorrow, steals The voice of Jesus, "It is I."'"

The music in her throat had trembled at first like the bird's flight, winging as it soared, but now all that was over; her uplifted face was holy, grave:

"'In the Rifted Rock I'm resting.'"

Elder Cossey forgot his wrath in mysterious deep movings of compunction. Fluke, who had entered, was soft, reverent, his fingers twitching for his violin. Even so, I thought, as I listened, it may be will sound to us some voice from the other sh.o.r.e, when we put out on the dark river.

"Vesty," said a mite of a girl, coming up to her after meeting, "Evelin wants to know if you can set up with Clarindy to-night. She 's been took again."

"Yes," said Vesty, the still look on her face, "I'll come."

"Vesty," said Elder Skates, "when can you haul over the organ and swipe her out? She 's full o' chalk."

"I'll try and do it to-morrow." Vesty looked at Elder Skates and smiled, showing her wholesome white teeth.

"Vesty," said Mrs. Nason Teel; "I want ye to set right down here, now I've got ye, and give me that resute for Mounting Dew pudding."

The blue eyes at the door gave Vesty an imperative, quick glance.

But she sat down by Mrs. Nason Teel; she sat there purposely until all the people were dispersed and the winding lanes were still outside.

Then she went her own way alone, something like tears veiled under those long, quiet lashes.

She saw first a muscular hand on the fence and dared not look up, until Notely Garrison had vaulted over at a bound and stood before her, his glad eyes flas.h.i.+ng, his storm hat in his hand.

Then her look was wild reproach.

"Vesty!" he cried. "Is this the way, after all we have been to one another? Have you forgotten how we were like sister and brother, you and I? how Doctor Spearmint led us to school together?" he laughed eagerly. "How"----

"I haven't forgotten, Note. But it can't be the same again, as man and woman, with what you are, and what I am."

"Better! O Vesty!"--he stood quite on a level with her now; she was glad of that. She was a tall girl, taller than he when they parted.

"O Vesty!" he drank in her beauty with an awe that uplifted her in his frank, bright gaze--"G.o.d was happy when He made you!"

But the girl's eyes only searched his with a Basin gravity, for faith.

A fatal step, searching in Notely's eyes! A beautiful pallor crept over her face, flus.h.i.+ng into joy. She ran her hand through his rough, light hair in the old way.

"It has not changed you, being at the schools so long, as I thought it would," she said wistfully, stroking his hair with mature gentleness, though he was older than she. "Why, Note; you look just as brown, and hearty, and masterful as ever!"

"Oh, but it wasn't book-schools I went to, you know. It was rowing and foot-ball and taking six bars on the running leap, and swinging from the feet with the head downward, and all that. I can do it all."

He looked away from her with mischief in his eyes, and hummed a line through his fine Greek nose, as Captain Pharo might.

"I don't doubt it, but you were high in the college too--for Lunette saw it in a paper: so high it was spoken of!"

"I just asked them to do that, Vesty. People can't refuse me, you know. I get whatever I ask for."

He turned to her with a sort of childish pathos on his strong, handsome face.

She bit her lip for joy and pride in him, even his strange, gay ways.

"Come, Vesta!" he said, with an air of natural and graceful proprietors.h.i.+p; "a stolen meeting is nonsense between you and me. I shall see you home."

II

"SETTIN' ON THE LOG"

His face invited me, the skin drawn over it rather tightly, resembling a death's-head, yet beaming with immortal joy.

He was sitting on a log; his little granddaughter, on the other side of him, was as cheerfully diverted in falling off of it. He was picking his teeth with some mysterious talisman of a bone, selected from the forepaw of a deer, and gazing at the heavens as at a fond familiar brother.

"Won't you set down a spa-ll," he said, and the way he said spell suggested pleasing epochs of rest.

"Leezur's my name; and neow I'll tell ye how ye can all'as remember it; it's jest like all them great discoveries, it's dreadful easy when it's once been thought on. Leezur--leezure--see? Leezure means takin'

things moderate, ye know, kind o' settin' areound in the shank o' the evenin'--Leezur--lee-zure--see!"

Oh, how he beamed! The systems of Newton and Copernicus seemed dwarfed in comparison. I sat down on the log; the little girl, gazing at me in astonishment, fell off.

"What's the marter, Dilly?" said her grandfather, in the same slow, mellow, jubilant tone with which he had propounded his discovery, and not withdrawing his fond smile from the heavens; "'s the log tew reoundin' for ye to set stiddy on?"

A rattling brown structure rose before us, surrounded by a somewhat firm staging; a skeleton roof, with a few s.h.i.+ngles in one corner, twisted all ways by the wind. It told its own tale, of an interrupted vocation.

"I expect to git afoul of her agin to-morrer," continued Captain Leezur; "ef Pharo got my nails when he went up to the Point to-day.

Some neow 's all'as dreadful oneasy when they gits to s.h.i.+nglin'; wants to drive the last s.h.i.+ngle deown 'fore the first one's weather-shaped.