Vesty of the Basins Part 23

Captain Pharo leaned forward and sniffed; so did Uncle Coffin.

"Water! Coffin, by clam!" said Captain Pharo, rising. "Plackards said 'twas goin' to be a re'listic play--and here, by clam! I've rode twelve miles over a hubbly road an' waited 'round here all day, jest t'

hear a spear o' female gra.s.s screech, an' see a pint bottle o' water busted! Come along! I'm goin' home."

How futile indeed are the poor effects of the stage compared with the ever new and varied drama of life itself!

As Miss Pray and I came in sight of her cottage, at this now uncanny hour of the night, we saw that the house was all alight, and Belle O'Neill stood in the doorway, loudly and gleefully ringing the dinner-bell.

"O Miss Pray, there was a dead pig washed ash.o.r.e to-day, right down on your clam-bottoms--such a beautiful one!--jest as fat!--and me and Wesley brought it up and roasted it, and we've been expectin' you, an'

expectin' you, an' tryin' to keep it hot----"

"A dead pig!" hissed Miss Pray. "Do you want to murder us? Do you want to drown me in the morning and p'ison me at night, Belle O'Neill?

For heaven's sake, have you et any of it?"

The appearance of the dish testified only too plainly that she and Wesley had dined.

"You're p'isoned!" shrieked Miss Pray: "be you prepared, Belle O'Neill?

Fat pig! He was prob'bly bloated with p'ison! Oh, dear! oh, mercy!

you're prob'bly dyin' this very minit."

Belle O'Neill began to howl, Wesley to weep dismally with low moans, his fists in his eyes.

I had a medicine which I administered to the two, in case the exigency were as fearful as Miss Pray predicted, which I strongly doubted. From this, as Belle O'Neill recovered, she turned to Miss Pray with the confessional fearlessness of one who has been at the grave's brink.

"And, oh, Miss Pray! the brindle cow 's calved and hid it in the woods!"

"So you've been down by the sea-wall, hunting up things to p'ison the only friend you ever had on earth with, and left the brindle cow and her calf to die in the woods?"

But Belle O'Neill had reached that plane of despondency where the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune could no longer sting her.

"I meant it for the best, Miss Pray," she said, as we all started, with the lantern, for the woods.

Never had I engaged in a scene of such eerie fascinations; especially as, when we discovered the cow with her calf, and endeavored to set the latter on its feet and lead it, the cow shook her horns at us with such an aggressive lunge, I fled without apology behind a tree, where Miss Pray and Wesley, dropping the lantern, pursued me with entreaties for protection!

But Belle O'Neill, seemingly conscious that she had to redeem herself by some heroic act or die, picked up the lantern and continued leading the calf, at which the cow singled her out with respect and obediently followed her: so that we who had witnessed her disgrace now followed meekly, afar off, her triumphal procession homeward.

"That girl has done n.o.bly," I said.

"Belle O'Neill," said Miss Pray, before we finally sought that repose which is the guerdon of all n.o.bly sustained adventure, "the drownin'

and the p'isonin' is both forgot, and next time the jew'lry pedler comes along you shall have a breas'pin--that is, if you're livin', Belle O'Neill."

"Oh, Belle will live," I cried; "the danger is over."

"Whether I lives or whether I dies," said Belle O'Neill, calm now on heights above us all, "I meant that roast pig for the best, Miss Pray."

But before I could get to sleep that night I gave myself up to folly; I rolled in inextinguishable fits of laughter. My gray heraldry, my ancient coat of arms, innocently maligned as they had been, stared down reproachfully at me through the night. I feebly wiped my weeping eyes and rolled and laughed the more, and slept at last such a sleep as only the foolish and blessed of mortality know.

XII

THE MASTER REVELLER

"Notely! You will be leading Fluke to go wrong, Notely. He takes no interest at home or in the fis.h.i.+ng since you and those pleasure-men you have with you have been keeping open house at the Neck. When he comes home he has been wild and drinking, and is moody. It is a week since you have been away from your home and wife with your yacht anch.o.r.ed here off sh.o.r.e, hunting and cruising, and such times at the old Garrison place at night--it is the talk!"

Notely laughed and rose. Vesty had been standing looking down at him earnestly, where he sat in her doorway: she held her baby asleep on one strong arm, its face against her neck.

Notely turned his own face away a little, jingling the free coin in his pockets. "Why, I have been making money on my own account, Mrs. Gurdon Rafe," he cried gayly, "since I opened the quarry. And no man, nor no woman either, now says to me, Do this or do that, go here or go there.

From all accounts, moreover, my wife and mother are enjoying themselves extremely well as ever during my absence. As for Fluke Rafe, he is a good fellow, but he was always wild as a hawk."

"O Notely! if you would only help such men, as you might, instead of being as wild as a hawk with them!"

"It takes a hawk to catch a hawk, my dear: all the ministers will tell you that."

"Is that what you are doing it for?"

"Well, no; since you are a Basin, and only truth avails, there has been hitherto no deep moral design in my merry orgies at the Neck. But to-night, Vesty, is my grand affair; to be hallowed by the presence of all the Basins: my feast and ball to them, you know--my oldest and best friends. And you--why, Vesty," he went on, in another tone, "you remember we had always a dance a week at the Basin, and you and I led them off together. Come, then, for the sake of old times and the feeling of the rest, though you may enjoy it yourself no more."

He spoke with reckless meaning, and his eyes, that had such fatal power of expression in them, looked deep into hers. She paled; the baby threw up a sleeping hand against her face.

"There is another thing, Notely," she said. "Gurdon does not like it that you come here for an hour or more every day to sit and talk alone with me while they are at the fis.h.i.+ng. He is not much to suspect, and he was always fond of you and trusted you; but it is not doing right by Gurdon."

Her eyes looked infinitely sorrowful into his; blushes, like pain, dyed her cheeks.

"O Vesty, my pure one!--then tell me that you love me still--love me as you used to do--and I'll go away content, and not come any more. Touch my head as you used to do; kiss me once more, with those words, and----"

The baby's white, sleeping palm pressed hard against the mother's burning cheek.

"Such words must not be any more, Notely. Go away and be the good, powerful man G.o.d meant you to be, and I shall love you more than I ever did in my life."

"Saint Vesta! I have lost you!" said Notely: his voice shook with pa.s.sion; the thin, strong hand that he put up, as if shading his eyes, hid wild and angry tears.

"I have been faithfully engaged in the career to which you so tenderly and considerately dedicated me," he went on. "What will you have? I worked last winter like a dog; nothing is easy won, I think: but there is no young man in this State who has been so flattered with public notice as I. I am making my own money--no young man more shrewdly, they say. What will you have? I have growing fame, prosperity, an accomplished society woman for my wife. Was not that what you wished for me?" His words stung.

Vesty had her dim look; she had turned cold; her speech groped pitifully. "But I think I saw--I think I understood a little, after all--because I loved you--what are you doing it _for_, Notely?"

"Ah, there, indeed!--what for? I have lost my object, you know, Saint Vesta. For fame and frolic and the devil, I suppose--since we are talking face to face with an immortal Basin--and to fill up the time generally."

"I am glad that I did what I did," cried the poor girl, her tongue touched with sudden fire, as if from outside herself; "you loved me a little, but you did not love me much!"

"Ah!" he caught his breath, his deep eyes thrilled her.

"If you had loved me much--such a man as to be true to me through hard work and time and sorrow and all--then you could not have borne to be any less a man, Notely Garrison, though you lost me, or whatever you lost. But if anything could turn you from _that_, then time and trial and all would have turned you, sooner or later, to be unkind and untrue to me. I know it. Before G.o.d, I know it! You loved me a little, but you did not love me much!"

"I am glad, for your sake and for my own," she said; "I am glad that I did not marry you."

Then, as the fire flamed out, tears of despair rushed to her eyes, because he looked as though she had hurt him so--his face more like a beautiful cameo than ever, pure and sharp; he who was so debonair and generous with them all, genial toward them always, and familiar with the simplest and poorest. She longed impulsively to take him to her heart, to give him with yearning tenderness the one caress he had pleaded for: but, still seeing dimly where he was blind, she would not.