Vesty of the Basins Part 43

"Didn't you want to sit with me?" said Vesty, her face rather grave.

"Oh, why do you ask that?"

"You looked, when they called our names, as though you didn't want to."

Now I tried to dwell upon the words of Captain Leezur, but, however callous I succeeded in appearing on the outside, at heart I was a happy, happy bean-pole.

"I was stunned," I said. "Besides, you see, I did not expect to be invited."

"Why not, Major Henry?"

Oh, the beautiful Basin! the beautiful Basin! I tried to speak, but could not.

"You never seemed before," said she, a sea-sh.e.l.l color glowing in her cheeks, "to feel above us!"

She felt humbled, and my poor brain was too dizzy and incredulous to frame fitting words. I swallowed hard; that was a Basin prerogative, and by exerting it a direct Basin inspiration seemed to come to me.

"Feel above you! O Vesty!"

At that the sea-sh.e.l.l color went away down low, even to her lips, but no further illumination came to me.

Past ghostly hill and moor and still-gleaming flood we flew. "I am happy," I could say at last, "as I ought not to be. In all scenes and places where I may ever be I shall remember this, Vesty."

She s.h.i.+vered a little. Ah! the sad old shawl! I clinched my hands.

Past hill and moor and still-gleaming flood: the light of day changed to one unfathomed, possible, as of sweet, unspoken dreams becoming blessed at nightfall.

Then all at once, round and full above a distant hill-top, rose the hoyden moon, and the Basins saluted her with shouts of natural delight, all save Vesty and I, who were silent.

Now, I saw, was the hour when each Basin put his arm about his girl. I could not have touched my girl, not under all the rollicking moonbeams that ever fired the heart of youth and man. Farther she seemed to me than that far white hill-top, glittering and high.

Yet it pierced me that it was a gloomy ride for her. "It was good and kind of them," I said, "to place a poor old fellow like me here beside you; but you should have one of those rosy, handsome lads with you; you so young, though we forget it. Your life is yet to live."

At the reproach in her eyes--a look of anger, too, but for its wild and dark distress--my heart had almost leaped to my lips.

But--too merry the rollickers, who had fallen behind us, driving on the homeward road; there had been several laughing, reckless adventures of overturned herring-boxes in the snow-drifts; now the pole attached to one of these had broken; the frightened horses had cleared themselves and were veering madly on the narrow road, with the swinging cross-bar, toward that side of the sled where my girl sat, unconscious of the danger, still and pale.

I sprang, fell in a heap, but rose again somehow; and now at last I put up my arm. It was not without strength--in this case more than mortal strong--still, in the end, I fell.

When I came to myself we were still flying through the wild, swift-changing scene, homeward bound; one of my hands was numb, and my wrist bandaged, and my head--was on Vesty's shoulder! We were in right Basin fas.h.i.+on now, only by needs it was Vesty's arm that was about me.

"Am I dead, Vesty?" said I, half believing it in my bliss; besides, I had ever a great appreciation of the Irish humor.

"Oh, don't, major; don't!" said Vesty; "you saved me from getting terribly hurt, they say--or----"

"Ugh!" I groaned.

"Your poor arm!" said she. "Oh, the pain!"

"Nothing pains me," said I.

"Your arm wasn't broken, major; but it 's terribly bruised and sprained."

"And my neck, Vesty--you are sure that was not broken?"

She sighed, but since I was bent, she followed my humor.

"Never fear," said this demure young woman; "that 's too proud ever to get a twist."

Here was a dilemma--that I should be developing into a wit and Vesty into a coquette!

"Well," said I, "I must try and straighten myself up again," and with that endeavor the pain did cut me so cruelly I fainted, quite without any maiden affectation, back again on to Vesty's arm.

"Try and think," said she, when I could hear her voice, "that I am some old woman, just trying to take care of you--somebody not disagreeable to you, and keep still till we get home."

"Very well," said I, tormenting myself with the thought that she was acting under some compelling sense of obligation; and that should never be.

So I answered briefly all at once; and no sooner had I spoken than I endured a gnawing consciousness that I was the hatefullest thing that had escaped extermination that night. I kept still, however; the pain was something to dread.

At least I had my beautiful mother's hair, thick and curling; that was all Vesty could see now there on her shoulder. I comforted myself with that thought as a child. I was weak, and I let some tears roll down my face that Vesty could not see.

When the strong fellows took me out of the sleigh and bore me very gently up to the door they stopped there for a moment, while I wondered; and if any bitter sense of their physical supremacy pierced me at that moment it ceased forever, as with a preconcerted signal from the foremost they lifted the caps from their heads and cheered my name, thrice and again, and again, with ringing cheers--and Vesty standing by!

The old Basin flag--almost as dilapidated as I--had heard nothing like it; but when they dressed the swollen arm pain sent me off into oblivion again. Vesty's was the last face I saw bending over me:

"Do you"--timidly--"do you want me to come to-morrow, and see how you are?"

"Oh, if you will--thank you! Still, I am all right--I shall be all right, never fear."

She lingered still a moment, but spoke calmly:

"If you don't care anything about me why did you risk your life to save me from getting hurt?"

A demon possessed me. Pity I could have endured, but if she were stung on by that inflicted sense of grat.i.tude?

"Why did you risk your life to save me?"

"Oh, it was _pity_, child," I answered her; the surging bitterness within made it almost a sneer--"natural human pity: it is strong in all my race."

She looked at me with a beautiful sorrow, and as though she called me proudly, to a better contempt of myself.

"I wish you had a mother," said she then, and flushed, the holy eyelids low, pinning the old shawl--"as it is, I don't know what to say."

XXIV

THE STORY OF THE SACRED COW