Chapter 10

"Will you make a better man of him in the world than his father was?" said Vesty simply.

"You know that I worship Gurdon Rafe's memory," cried Mrs. Garrison, with adroit heat. "What do you think would please him best for his wife and child--misery and cold with an old man who could have a better home among his own kin, had he not to make the effort to support you--or happiness and warmth and love, and a great sphere of usefulness, happiness, and education for his child?"

"You see," said Vesty, on the plain Basin path, "in trying to get those things we might miss the only--the greatest--thing, that Gurdon had. I'd rather my boy should learn to have that, and miss all the others."

"O my dear! you shall teach your child, you shall be always with him. I have some things to remember and regret, Vesty. I promise you solemnly--and I do not break my word--I will not interfere. You shall teach and guide your child as you will."

Notely was awake and calling.

"Go to him," said Mrs. Garrison, excitement in her eyes; "he will explain to you, my child." There was a tenderness, a hope, a voluptuousness of sweet earthly things in her manner toward the poor girl now, which all her life Vesty had missed.

Heart and flesh were weary, and Notely, who had been the light of her life once, looked up at her with that weight of sorrow, so much darker and heavier than her own; so much heavier because it was dark.

"Help me to bear it!" he said.

She understood all; she laid her head beside him, sobbing.

"Vesty, you know the doctors say that I shall live; but--now that I am sane again, I do not know why I should wish to live."

She put her hand on his. Alas! in spite of reckless wandering and tragedy, and forsaken faith and duty, the touch only thrilled him with his own dreams as of old.

"Listen, Vesty!--just as you used to be my little woman and reason with me. Ugh! how weak I am! I'm not worth saving. It is of little consequence, truly; but, such as it is, it all lies with you. Some time, Vesty--I am speaking of what must be some time, dearest; and remember, it is often done in the world, among those who are highest and richest and socially recognized--well, it is a familiar thing: as soon as it can be well arranged--and that soon, now--my wife and I shall be divorced. We have both wished it, we are unhappy together, it is a wrong for us to live together. She has been untrue enough to me, as I to her, but let that pass; such things are not for your ears to hear, only you need have no qualms. Grace will be more congenially wedded within two months after we are parted.

"And then--Vesty? Well, will you not speak to me? Is it to be life and honor, with your love at last, or despair and death? You were promised to me once. In spite of all, you cannot hold yourself your own; you are mine; the wife God meant for me. O Vesty! let us blot out the confused past with all its mistakes! It is killing me--will kill me body and soul if you leave me now. Let me find my lost home at last: let me rest a little while before I die!"

His weak and gasping breath warned her; she stilled his hands, the low lids hiding the anguish in her eyes.

So there was a way out of it all, easy, luxurious, convenient for the passions! And there was a straight Basin way, a high promise before God and man, that, to the Basin sense, there was no taking back: Vesty could not see upon any other road; she shuddered.

But Notely's wasted, broken life clinging to her!

"That was never done among the Basins, Notely. When we are married we promise, and we hold to it till death. It would never seem to me that I was your wife, but wicked and false to you and her--always that. I would rather die!"

"My Vesty, the Basin is a little, little part of the world, and ignorant of life. I tell you what is right. You used to have faith in me--so much that, if you would, you might still believe in me and my ceaseless love for you. Do you think that I will ever leave you here? My mother wants you and the child: we will be happy together at last, with such quiet or such pleasures as you will. My quarries are turning out wealth for me--it is for you and Gurdon's child. Think of Gurdon's little boy!"

As he spoke, Vesty seemed to see again a pale face with a great light upon it, turning without question to its stern duty.

"Notely, Gurdon gave me up, and the baby that he worshipped; though I clung to him, he put us by, because, though it was hard, it was right--it was the only way. I think it is often so between those two, the right and what we want. I think that love, somehow, in this world seems to be putting by--putting by what we want."

Vesty struggled again in her dim way.

"Why need it be?" cried Notely sharply. He raised himself on the pillows as if stung; a deep crimson rushed to his cheeks.

"It is," said Vesty sadly, quietly--"it is. What we want--putting by. Do you think I did not care for you?"

His haggard face turned to her.

"Will not always care for you? But you will never be a great man till you can put by what you want, when they stand against each other, for what is right, though it be hard. Then one would not only admire and love you; they would trust you to death's door, though all the way was hard."

Notely had no answer for the tongue-loosed Basin. Besides, her words had comforted him, her tears fell on him.

"I do not think," she said, with a look and voice of such tenderness, as though it were her farewell, "that it was all to us, that I should marry you, or you should marry me--until we could live brave and true, though we lost one another, and follow the only way we saw, though it was hard. I do not believe we should have been happy--without that--after a little while.

"I could not love you if you left your wife and married me. I should never trust you. I would rather we should both die. Go back to her and win her with your own love and kindness, and be true to her, and I shall never lose my love for you."

"Do you know what love is?" said Notely, with clinched teeth, tears springing from between the wasted fingers pressed against his eyes. "Do you know what it is to suffer?"

She gave him no flaming retort. She put her head beside him.

The past came back to him, and her poor, burdened, self-sacrificing life. Wild sobs shook his heart. "All lost! all lost!" he moaned.

"No, only not found yet," she said, looking at him through her tears; "all waiting."

It was such a simple Basin path, knowing so few things, but unswerving.

"Not here, I know," she said, "for nothing is for long or without loss and sorrow here. There is always somebody sick or hurt; and the poplar trees, that the cross was made from, are always trembling and sighing: but some time Christ will lay his hand upon them, and they will be still and blessed again."

XVII

GOIN' TO THE DAGARRIER'S

"Ever sence the accident," said Captain Pharo, with a gloom not wholly impersonal, "my woman 's been d'tarmined to haul me over to a dagarrier's to have my pictur' took.

"I told 'er that there wa'n't no danger in the old 'Lizy Rodgers,' sech weather as I go out in. 'But ye carn't never tell,' says she; 'and asides,' says she, 'ye're a kind o' baldin' off an' dryin' away, more or less, every year,' says she, 'an' I want yer pictur' took afore----'

"Gol darn it all!" said Captain Pharo, making an unsuccessful attempt to light his pipe, and kicking out his left leg testily.

"'Afore ye gits to lookin' any meachiner,' says she.

"'When I dies,' says I, 'th' inscription on my monniment won't be by no drowndin',' says I; 'it'll be jest plain, "Pestered ter death,"' says I.

"Wal, 't that she began a-boohooin', so in course I told 'er, says I, 'I s'pose I c'n go and have my dagarrier took ef you're so set on it,' says I.

"For with regards t' female grass, major, my exper'ence has all'as made me think o' that man in Scriptur' 't was told to do somethin'. 'No, by clam!' says he, 'I ain't a-goin' to,' and hadn't more 'n got the words outer his mouth afore somehow he found himself a-shutin' straight outer the front door to go to executin' of it.

"When I thinks o' that tex'--an' I ponders on it more 'n what I does on mos' any other tex' in Scriptur'--I says to myself, 'Thar' 's Pharo Kobbe--thar' 's my dagarrier, 'ithout no needs o' goin' nowheres to have it took."

"I should think it would be very nice," I said, "to have somebody wanting your picture.--I am not pressed with entreaties for mine."

Captain Pharo sighed kindly; his pipe was going.

"Poo! poo! hohum! Never mind; never mind.

I s'pose ye hain't never worked yerself up to the p'int o' propoundin' nothin' yit to Miss Pray, have ye?"

"No."

"Why don't ye, major?"

"When I think of how much better off she is with seven dollars a week for my board than she would be taking me as a husband, for nothing----"

"Oh, pshaw! major, pshaw!" said Captain Pharo, with deep returning gloom; "seven dollars a week ain't nothin' to the pleasure she'd take, arfter she'd once got spliced onto ye, in houndin' on ye, an' pesterin' ye, an' swipin' the 'arth with ye."

Conscious that he had rather over-reached himself in presenting this picture of marital joys to my horizon, Captain Pharo resumed the subject with sprightliness.

"In course the first preliminary essence o' all these 'ere ructions 'ith female grass is, 't ye've got to go a-co'tin'."

"Yes."

"And in goin' a-co'tin', ye've got to ile yer ha'r out some, an' put essence on yer han'kercher, an' w'ar a smile continnooal, an' keep a-arskin' 'em ef tobakker smoke sickens on 'em, an' all sech o' these ere s'ciety flourishes an' gew-gaws 's that."

"Yes," said I, attentively.

"I'd ort ter know," said Captain Pharo, alone with me in the lane, assuming a gay and confident air, "f'r I've been engaged in co'tin' three times, an' ain't had nary false nibble, but landed my fish every time."

"I know you have."

"Now ef you don't feel rickless enough, major, and kind o' wanter see how it 's done, you ask Miss Pray t' sail along with us up to Millport, whar I've got to go to have my condum' pictur' took."

The recollection of personal grievances again beclouded Captain Pharo; he was silent.

"And what?" I said.

"Wal," said my soul's companion, with the fire all gone from his manner, "I'll kinder han' 'er into the boat, an' shake my han'kercher at 'er an' smile, when Mis' Kobbe ain't lookin', an' the rest o' these ere s'ciety ructions, jest t' show ye how."

I appreciated the motives, the sacrifice even, of this conduct as anticipated toward Miss Pray, whose society, as far as his own peculiar taste went, Captain Pharo always rather tolerated than affected.

Still, it was with doubtful emotions, on the whole, that I wended my steps with Miss Pray toward the enterprise.

The scow "Eliza Rodgers" was waiting for us at anchor among the captain's flats. We went first to the house.

There it became at once evident to me that, rather than preparing himself with oil and incense for the occasion, Captain Pharo had been undergoing severe and strict manipulations at the hands of his wife. He had on the flowered jacket, but as proof against the sea air until he should be photographed, Mrs. Kobbe had applied paste to the locks of hair flayed out formidably each side of his head beyond his ears.

Altogether, I could not but divine that during my absence his flesh had been growing more and more laggard to the enterprise, his spirit testy and unreconciled.

"'F I can't find my pipe I shan't go," said he, with secret source of sustainment; "stay t' home 'nless I c'n find my pipe, that's sartin as jedgment."

Now I knew from the way the captain's hand reposed in his pocket that his treasure was safely hidden there--that he was dallying with us. Knowing, too, that he could not escape by such means, but was only weakly delaying his fate, I took occasion to whisper in his ear, as I affected to join in the search:

"Take her out, captain, and light her up. Let 's go through with it. Remember you promised to show me how to act."

"Hello! why, here she is a-layin' right on the sofy," said he, in a tone of forlorn acquiescence that could never have recommended him to the footlights, especially as this remark antedated, by some anxious breathings on my part, the sheepish and bungling withdrawal of his pipe from his pocket.

"Captain Pharo Kobbe," said his wife, regarding him, "ain't you a smart one!"

The captain's manner certainly did not justify this taunt. As he led us, with an exaggerated limp, toward the beach, I looked in vain for any of those light and elegant attentions toward Miss Pray at which he had hinted. But when we arrived in view of the "Eliza Rodgers" and saw that the tide had so far receded that we must pick our way gingerly thither over the mud flats, by stepping on the sparsely scattered stones, Captain Pharo looked at me and took a stand.

"Miss Pray," said he, "'f it 's agreeable to you, I'll hist ye up an' carry on ye over."

"Cap'n Pharo Kobbe," said his wife, as if it were suddenly and startlingly a subject of physics, "whatever is the matter with you?"

"Carn't I be p'lite ef I want to?" roared the captain; but as he surveyed his contemplated burden, who was a good many inches taller than he, and by all odds sprightlier, he paled.

"Ef 't you _could_ get anything, Cap'n Kobbe," said his wife, "I sh'd think you had."

This unblessed dark reminder of a causeless deprivation settled it. Captain Pharo seized Miss Pray, blushing with alarm and amaze at such sudden retributive lightning on the part of her long-delayed charms, and bore her out into the mud.

But he had labored but a few steps with her, giving vent meanwhile to audible, involuntary groans, before it became evident to her, or to them both, that his grasp was failing, his feet sinking. She threw up a hand and partly dislodged his pipe; it was instantly a question of dropping his pipe or Miss Pray; the captain dropped Miss Pray.

Both women were now angry with him; between all that sea and sky Captain Pharo appeared not to have a friend save his pipe and me.

Miss Pray indignantly picked the rest of her steps alone. "Ye'll have to do the rest o' yer co'tin' in yer own way," murmured the captain to me, darkly and vaguely, as he stepped into the boat: "but my 'dvice to ye is, drop it! drop it right whar 'tis!"

"Oh, that is all right," I tried to assure him. "I--I hadn't hardly begun, you know."

We scoured the bottom successfully with the "Eliza Rodgers," but as we got into deep water there fell a perfect calm.

"'T 'd be bad enough," said Captain Pharo, set against the world, and tugging wrathfully at the oars, "t' go on sech idjit contractions as these 'ith a breeze t' set sail to, but when 't comes to pullin' over thar' twenty mile, with the sea as flat as a floor, t' have yer darn fool pictur' took----" He laid down the oars with an undoubted air of permanency, and lit his pipe.

Mrs. Kobbe pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. "Cap'n Pharo Kobbe, them 't knew you afore ever I was born say as 't you was the best master of a vessel 't ever sailed, and everybody knows 't you can sail this coast in the dark, an' though--though you did act queer a little while ago, I don't--don't like to have you call yourself a da--darn fool."

Captain Pharo glanced at me with suicidal despair.

Mrs. Kobbe and Miss Pray took out their knitting, with the implicit Basin superstition of "knitting up a breeze." They as seriously advised me to "scratch the mast and whistle," which, agreeably, I began to do.

Thus occupied, I saw a sudden light break over the captain's face, as sighting something on the waves.

"Fattest coot I've seen this year, by clam!" said he, seizing his gun from the bottom of the scow and firing. He fired again, and then rowed eagerly up to it. It was a little wandering wooden buoy bobbing bird-like on the waters.

We did not look at him. Mrs. Kobbe and Miss Pray knitted; I scratched the mast with painful diligence.

A breeze arose. The captain silently hoisted sail; at length he lit his pipe again, and returned, in a measured degree, to life.

As we sailed thus at last with the wind into Millport it seemed that the "Eliza Rodgers" and we were accosted as natural objects of marvel and delight by the loafers on the wharf.

"What po-ort?" bawled a merry fellow, speaking to us through his hands.

"Why, don't ye see?" said a companion, pointing to Captain Pharo, who was taking down sail, with the complete flower turned shoreward; "they're Orientiles!"

A loud burst of laughter arose. Personal allusions equally glove-fitting were made to Mrs. Kobbe, to Miss Pray, to me, and to the "Eliza Rodgers."

"Say! come to have your pictures took?" bawled the first merry fellow, as the height of sarcasm and quintessence of a joke.

"Look a' here, major," almost wept poor Captain Pharo, "how in thunder 'd they find that out?"

"Never mind," said I; "we're going up to the hotel, and we'll have a better dinner than they ever dreamed of."

"Afore I'm took to the dagarrier's?"

"Yes, indeed."

"See here, wife!" said Captain Pharo, completely broken down--for we were all suffering, as usual, from the generic emptiness and craving of our natures for food--"major says 't we're goin' up to git baited, afore I'm took to the dagarrier's."

"I wish 't you could have your picture took jest as you look now, Captain Pharo Kobbe!" exclaimed his wife kindly and admiringly.

At the inn the most conspicuous object in the reception-room was a sink of water, with basins for ablutions.

Captain Pharo waited, visibly holding the leash on his impatience, for a "runner"--or travelling salesman--to complete his bath, when he plunged in gleefully, face and hands. Mrs. Kobbe drew him away with dismay. The paste that had endured the whole sea voyage he had now ruthlessly washed from one side of his head, the locks on the other side still standing out ebullient.

"'M sorry, wife," said the captain. But the captain, smelling the smoke from the kitchen, was not the forlorn companion of our treacherous voyage. "I reckon she'll stan' out ag'in, mebbe," said he, "soon 's she 's dry." But he winked at me with daring inconsequence.

In vain Mrs. Kobbe tried to flay out those locks to their former attitude with the hotel brush and comb, which the runner had finally abandoned.

"Poo! poo! woman, never mind," said the captain; "one side 's fa'r to wind'ard, anyhow. I can have a profiler took, jest showin' one side on me, ye know."

"I didn't want a profiler," lamented Mrs. Kobbe; "I wanted a full-facer."

"Wal, wal, woman, I hain't washed my face off, have I?" said the captain cheerfully, resurrecting his pipe. "Put up them thar' public belayin' pins," he added, referring to the hotel brush and comb, "and don't le's worry 'bout nothin' more, 'long as we're goin' to be baited."

The "runner" meanwhile was looking at us with the pale, scientific interest of one who covets curiosities which he yet dare not approach too intimately.

"Do you smoke before eating, sir?" said he to the captain, at the same time standing off a little way from the elephant.

"Poo! poo!" said Captain Pharo, turning the whole flower indifferently to his questioner, and drawing a match with a slight, genteel uplifting of the leg; "I smoke, as the 'postle says, on all 'ccasions t' all men, in season an' outer season, an' 'specially when I'm a darn min' ter."

The runner, withered, vanquished by horse and foot, thereafter regarded us silently.

At the table I made haste first of all to catch the eye of our waiter, who was also the proprietor of the little inn. I pressed a wordless plea into his hand. "We are eccentric," I murmured in explanation, "and you must look well to our wants."

He winked at me as though we had been life-long cronies. "Eccentric all ye wan' ter," said he, "the more on 'er the better."

I pointed to the captain, who, the table-cloth before him, sat rigid with hunger.

"The ladies will consider the bill of fare," I said, "and request that Captain Kobbe may be first served."

"Which'll ye have--boil' salmon, corn' beef, beef-steak, veal stew, liver an' bacon?" quickly bawled the proprietor into the captain's ear.

"Sartin, sartin, fetch 'em along," said the compliant and nervy captain, "and don't stand thar' no'ratin' about 'em--'ceptin' liver," he added. "I hain't got so low down yit 's to eat liver."

The runner, sitting with a few guests at another table, served by the proprietor's daughter, gazed at us with fixed vision, not even having taken up his knife and fork, for that pale, scientific interest which absorbed him.

"I know that squar's are fash'nable," said the captain, taking up the napkin by his plate on the point of his knife and giving it an airy toss into the middle of the table; "but I'd ruther have the sea-room. Is your mess all fillers to-day, or have ye got some wrappers?"

"Wrappers? Oh, certainly--doughnuts, mince pie, apple pie, an' rhubub pie."

"Sartin, sartin; fetch 'em along. I'll try a double decker o' rhubub--I'm ruther partial to 'er. Fetch 'em all in: all'as survey yer country, ye know, afore ye lays yer turnpike. F'r all these favors, O Lord, make us duly thankful. Touch-and-go is a good pilot," mumbled the captain in a religious monotone, and began.

From this time on our table fairly scintillated with mirth and good cheer, in the midst of which, his first hunger appeased, the captain's resonant tones were frequently heard pealing through the dining-room, singing, as if particularly, it seemed, to the edification of the pale runner, that "His days were as the grass, or as the morning flower."

I observed how Mrs. Kobbe and Miss Pray now and then warily conveyed a "doughnut" from the table to their pockets, with an air of dark declension from the moral laws. Having filled their own receptacles, they whispered me an entreaty to do the same, as we might be late with the tide and hungry on our way home. I complied in this, as in every case, gallantly; but in my very first essay was detected by the proprietor with a large edible of this description half-way to my trousers' pocket. He winked unconsciously and obligingly turned his back. Captain Pharo, however, oblivious to sense of guilt, approved my action in clear words: "Tuck in the cheese too, major," said he; "it'll do for the mouse-trap."

I was equally unfortunate when, some time after, in settling for our dinner I drew out first, instead of my purse, the very same fried cake which had formerly betrayed me; and, to add to my discomfiture, Miss Pray and Mrs. Kobbe, who had six of these stolen products each in their capacious pockets, retired into a corner, innocently giggling.

But an unexpected formidable dilemma arose when Captain Pharo, braced up to such a degree by his dinner and his pipe, declared that "He didn't know as he should be took to any dagarrier's, after all! Tide and wind both serve f'r a fa'r sail home," said he, "and I'm a-goin'."

"Not till we've been to a tobacconist's," said I, "anyway."

I purchased a quantity of smoking tobacco. With this parcel peeping enticingly from my pocket, and with persuasive argument that I could never again leave the Basin without his likeness, as aid to Mrs. Kobbe's tears, we at last seduced him up the stairs of the studio to the long-anticipated ordeal.

Now if young Mrs. Kobbe had had the discretion to keep silence! But "I wish, pa," said she, made bodeful by the agonized and even villanous aspect of the captain's usually stoical features, "'t you could look just as you did when major said he was goin' to take us up to dinner!"

"Good Lord! woman, how can I tell how I looked then? I didn't see myself, did I?"