Chapter 14

"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-shell 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-shell 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 shivered 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 fashion 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 gratitude?

"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

Vesty came next day at evening, but she took pains to be found in company with almost the entire Basin.

I was so much better that I was able to be about and receive my guests; at sight of Uncle Coffin even the maimed hand seemed to tingle healthily. He marched me to a chair with an ostentation of violence, that really treated me, however, with the softest gentleness, and sat me down.

"Dodrabbit ye!" he cried, standing off and regarding me. "What ye been a-doin' of, you young smashin', slashin', cavortin'-all-around young spark, you!"

"Well," said I, naturally feeling rakish after this, "I will tell you. Miss Pray had a brood of chickens come off unseasonably to-day, who desired particularly and above all things, having taken a general outlook on life, not to live. Under Miss Fray's directions I have been amusing myself with trying to defeat that purpose. I have watched for any signs of hope in their world-disgusted eyes, dipped their unwilling beaks in food, put chips upon their backs to help them maintain an earthly equilibrium--so little desired by them, however, that oftener they have toppled over and turned their infantile legs entreatingly upward; but I have conquered; they live."

"Wal, neow," said Captain Leezur, my chiefest admirer, "ef you ain't a case to describe anything in natur'! Ef I had you areound I shouldn't never want no dagarrier of a sick chicken, for you'd call 'em right up afore me!"

I murmured my low thanks, blushing as usual under flattery.

Vesty was talking brilliantly with some of the company, quite away from me. She had a bright, disdainful look, when I chanced to glance that way, new to her, but quite befitting--ah me! ah me!--some lady one might dream of, of high, disdainful quality.

"Ain't he a case neow to describe anything in natur'?" joyfully reiterated Captain Leezur to Uncle Coffin.

Uncle Coffin, with his hands on his knees, shook his head at me, finding no words quite to the mark.

"Dodrabbit ye!" said he; "you sly young dog, you!"

"That's what I tell him!" rippled the deep-gurgling brook of Captain Leezur's voice; "we're jest like nateral twin-brothers. Only," he added tenderly and gravely, "he ain't nigh so ongodly as I use' ter be."

"Ongodly! Why, dodrabbit ye, Leezur!" said this native Artichoke, "ye never done an ongodly thing in yer life--'cept, maybe," he added, "to cuss a little when ye was fishin' for the bucket."

"'Specially," said Captain Leezur intelligently, "when the women folks has been thar afore ye, r'ilin' the water and jabbin' of her furder deown."

Uncle Coffin gave me an irresistible but a loving and true, not a malicious, wink.

"Speakin' o' women folks, Leezur," said he, "is there any news from Lot's wife?"

Captain Leezur cleared the mellow symphonies of those organs through which he intoned his speech; and was about to reply, fully and sweetly, when Captain Pharo made his appearance at the door.

Uncle Coffin sprang from his chair, and with a grave face, which only later broke out into those beams of affection which were storming his bosom, shook him violently by the collar, dragged him across the floor, and set him in a chair by the fireplace with a loud, conclusive thump.

"Dodrabbit ye, man!" said he, "I hain't heered your voice since I was a baby."

Captain Pharo, with a countenance full of delight and sympathy, pulled his ruffled jacket down nearer to the waist line, and lit his pipe.

"Dodrabbit ye, Pharo!" continued Uncle Coffin, and turned from his pet to me with another wink, "what are yer days like now? They ain't like the grass, are they? I b'lieve they are, jest like the same old grass, or like the morning flower, the blighting wind sweeps o'er. She withers in an'--why don't ye never finish on 'er out, Pharo? Why don't ye never ring the last note on 'er--eh?"

"Because, Coffin," said Captain Pharo, with a smile of deep meaning, "because thar's so many things that when they're onct finished they 're completely done for in this world; eat a meal o' vittles and thar 's the end on't; smoke a pipe an' she runs dead; I like t' have one thing left over. I like to feel, Coffin, by clam! 't thar's somethin' 't thar ain't go'n' to be no end on!"

Uncle Coffin had been studying him attentively, with his hands on his knees.

"Kobbe," said he, "you're a philosoffarer."

Captain Pharo wiggled uneasily.

"I don't say hippopotamar nor rhinosossarer," said Uncle Coffin; "I say philosoffarer."

Captain Pharo drew a strange breath of relief.

"Mebbe we're a little alike in that respec'," Captain Leezur assured him deliciously; "'cept 't he ain't nigh so ongodly as I use' ter be."

"I don' know," said Captain Pharo. "I have worked sometimes, Sundays--poo! poo! hohum!--but not 'less 'twas somethin' 'mportant, gettin' in hay or somethin' like that. And I have--poo! poo! hohum! Wal, wal--hauled out my lobster car sometimes Sundays waitin' for the smack--hohum!"

"Pharo," said Uncle Coffin, holding up his finger, "no more! I know ye. Thar ain't an ongodly bone in yer body--'cept maybe when ye've lost yer pipe an' cussed a little."

"An' the women folks wants to haul ye over somewhar's on a flat sea to have yer gol darn pictur' took!" said Captain Pharo, with poignant recollection of a still unquiet grief.

"Kobbe," said Uncle Coffin, "no more!"

"'I know not why I love her, The fair an' beau'chus she; She bro't the cuss upon me, Und'neath the apple-tree: But she asked me for my jack knife, And halved 'er squar' with me, Sence all'as lovely woman Gives the biggest half to thee.'"

"Judah's wife writ that," exclaimed Captain Pharo, with a generic awe of poetry as poetry.

"She did," said Uncle Coffin, with eyes appreciative of the muse fixed gravely on the fire, "she did."

There was a daughter of Eve who was treating me very severely.

Instead of the old encouraging smile and gleam of merry recognition or sympathy in her eyes, there was now an averted gaze, bent very brightly, it seemed, on every one but me; in that direction alone, a studied coldness, a haughty carriage of the head. What could I expect?--but it broke my heart.

I subscribed silently to the mood of Belle O'Neill, whose mind was subject to vagaries, and who in the midst of the gay company was playing weird, plaintive "revival" tunes upon the mouth-harp, enthusiastically absorbed in her art.

Her mistress, Miss Pray, who notably for some time had been receiving the attentions of Pershal, the man who had been in California, had withdrawn with him, with tacit understanding of apologies, to the kitchen, where they were carrying on their courting, as all good Basins should, undisturbed.

The young people were playing a game of forfeits. I heard Vesty's penalty pronounced; it was, to go and put her hand upon "the handsomest man in the room."

She began to move, with her lovely, erect head and brilliant, averted smile, toward the fireplace. Surely she would not put any ignominy or mockery upon me--ah, no! I knew in my heart. But she came nearer, and I gazed, spellbound; and then she bowed her beautiful head with a tender, laughing smile, and laid her hand on Captain Leezur's shoulder.

"Here!" she said.

Oh, how he laughed! Robins by the brook, and sun-sparkles.

"That 's right, Vesty!" he exclaimed; "that 's right, darlin'. Come and kile yourself areound them 't 's got some feelin's!"

He winked at Captain Pharo and Uncle Coffin. The sweet girl blushed disdainfully--for some one--and, with a lingering touch on the dear man's shoulder, went away.

"I've all'as been kiled over a good deal," explained Captain Leezur gently, with a smile the subtlety of which he sought in a measure to hide.

"And we mustn't forgit," he added, "that thar 's a time for all things under the sun. Thar 's a time to be a bean-pole and thar 's a time to kile."

He winked at me; fearing that I had not understood, he winked still broader; then, moving his back toward his two companions, he directed full upon me a wink so vast and expressive that I endeavored at once to signify my enlightenment by replying in kind; but, unpractised as I was in the art, I could only infer what the unlovely aspect of my features must have been from the look of sorrowful disgust which immediately thereafter overspread Vesty's own.

But it transpired that that look of disgust was not for me. It was for Belle O'Neill, who, moved by another inspiration, had thoughtfully abandoned her mouth-harp to creep through the surreptitious channel of the wood-box and learn how Miss Pray and Pershal were progressing in their courting.

She returned with a face of excitement.

"Be they j'indin' hands, or anything like that?" we asked.

"No," said Belle O'Neill: "he told 'er winter pears was the pears for him, an' she giv' him a slap an' started down suller to get a dish o' fruit, an' he told 'er when she come back he was goin' ter tell her a story 't he hadn't never told or dreamed o' tellin' to anybody but her; he said he'd all'as kep' it to himself, 'cause folks 't hadn't been in Californy was ign'runt an' env'ous, an' wouldn't believe nothin' 't was told 'em, but he guessed she loved him well enough to b'lieve it; an' he said the name of it was 'The Story o' the Sacred Cow!'"

On uttering these words with a countenance of feverish eagerness and expectation, Belle O'Neill unhesitatingly turned and crept back through the passage.

Not long afterward I found myself lifted bodily over into the wood-box, and guided by the silent wake of Captain Pharo's pipe before, and entreated gently by Uncle Coffin from behind, I crawled to the little store-room adjoining the kitchen.

The door was slightly ajar; and with whatever shame I have only to record that I stood with delectation by this door and waited for the Man-Who-had-Been-in-California to tell "The Story of the Sacred Cow."

"Arter all, Jane," said he, plunging his knife into a choice pear, "you'd orter seen the winter fruit we use' ter have in Californy!"

Miss Fray's face fell. We heard Captain Pharo groan silently; moreover, his pipe had gone out, and he dared not relight it.

"I thought you was goin' to tell a new one--about the Sacred Cow?" said Miss Pray.

"So I will, Jane," said Pershal; "but the fact is, it 's sech a true, sech a solemn an' myster'ous thing, that I fa'rly dread to tackle it!"

Belle O'Neill would have gasped, had she dared. She kicked the calf of my lame leg convulsively instead.

"Thar's been a great many stories," continued Pershal, "about sacred cows. Folks has claimed t' seen 'em. Circuses has claimed t' had 'em: but the fact, an' the solemn fact, is, thar wa'n't never but one Sacred Cow, and that was raised on my farm in Californy.

"She was white, and nothin' monst'ous, jest about the size of an ordinary cow"--Captain Pharo drew an inaudible sigh of relief--"it was the intellex of her and the sacredness; wal, the go-to-meet'n-ness of her, as ye might say, that was so monst'ous an' so strange that I trem'le to call it up ag'in; but I've promised, an' I will."

Belle O'Neill, pale in the darkness, stifled another gasp.

"She wa'n't nothin' byordinar' as a calf; run an' gambil around with the other calves, bunt everythin', an' shake her heels out with the sinfullest. It was when she got to be a cow, and a old cow, that these here ructions o' sacredness, as ye might say, begun to develop themselves in her.

"First I knew, she wouldn't eat nothin': we warmed her mess an' we salted it; no, nothin' 'u'd do. We tried all manner o' gimcracks an' fussin' with her. Finally says Jim--my man--say she: 'Perhaps she's the Sacred Cow,' says he, laffin', an' went in an' got a hymn-book an' sot it up afore her, and"--Belle O'Neill shivered--"what does the old cow do but pitch in and eat her mess regalar! Minit we took that hymn-book away or shet it up, she'd stop eatin'."

Captain Pharo and Uncle Coffin nudged each other in voiceless agony. I felt, but could not see, the calm irradiance of Captain Leezur's look.

"Then another singalar thing begun to be noticed. All them 't drunk the milk from her was took an' possessed to jine the church! I use' ter send out peddlin' carts o' milk--for my ranch was the biggest in that section--it use' ter be all mixed together in course, an' the smallest elemunt o' that old cow's milk in it made it jest the same as ef 'twas all hern. Sometimes I thought ser'ously whether I hadn't ought to take her and go around an' start seasons o' special interest with her all over the kentry; and then thinks I--no, I'll stay here and I'll let 'em build new churches. So they kep' a-goin' up--three new Baptis', four new Methodis', in a month's time."

Captain Leezur was softly but strenuously sucking a nervine lozenge. I heard Captain Pharo crunching one down stormily, at the same time one was pressed into my hand. "They come high," whispered the beloved voice; "cent apiece, dollar a hunderd, but----"

"But the strangest and singalarest of it all, I didn't find out till 'long toward the last. I was a-milkin' on her one day, an' I spilled the milk accidental, an' I said a word that I hadn't ort'er said. When she heered that she up an' kicked me, an' I give her tail a yank, an' she began to sing----"

Belle O'Neill clutched me by the neck.

"I don' say that she sung as Vesty doos. I don' say that she pernounced the words jest regalar; but as fur as tune goes, she hit the tune right squar' in the bull's eye every time. She sung:

"'From Greenlan's icy mountings, From Injy's coral stran', Whar Aferk's sunny fountings Roll down their goldin' san';'"

And when she got as fur as that"--Pershall showed evidences of lively distress--"she keeled right over an' died."

"You've heered o' the tewn 't the old cow died on? Wal, that 's whar it all started, Jane; right thar. That was the very cow and the very event. It was _my_ old cow that died."

"Give me sea-room here, by clam!" muttered Captain Pharo, shooting his arms about.

"Ef I b'lieved in gho's, I sh'd say 't your but'ry was harnted, Jane," came from the kitchen the solemn and shifty voice of the Man-Who-had-Been-in-California: "le's step around by the outside way to the door whar the folks is. Jest look at the stars, Jane," he continued, when they were safe out. "See anythin' o' my old cow up in the Milky Way? Down in the southern latitude, whar I was, the Milky Way use' ter be so plain some nights 't ye could see----"

We lost it in the distance, as we returned, by the honorable and legitimate highway now offered us, to the guest-room. "I never keered so much about money in the bank," said Uncle Coffin, giving me a nudge; "all 't I ever as't for was luck!"

But I yearned in secret to know the developments of the Milky Way; especially as the length of time absorbed by Pershal and Miss Pray in walking between the two doors advised me with an only too tragic hint of the marvel and interest I had lost.

I could not wonder that Vesty was now loftier toward me than ever. Uncle Coffin, Captain Pharo, Captain Leezur and I kept close together as a sort of brazen and disgraceful community. Uncle Coffin, having to retrace his steps to Artichoke, was the first to leave the party.

"I can't tell ye, Miss Pray," said he, "how much I've enjiyed the evenin'--no, honest, I can't tell ye!"--he winked at Captain Pharo, who choked and had to resort to song--"but I und'stand thar 's a happy event comin', an' I wish ye jiy; ye know I do!"

As he disappeared down the road he indulged in a continued, loud, and exact imitation of Admiral 'S I Sums-it-up (who was also a justice of the peace, and who married people):

"G'long, ye old fool! Git up, ye old skate!"

At which we all, including Pershal and Miss Pray, laughed inordinately, gazing out into the sweet Basin night; and indeed I was even ready to avow with my life that it was a joke of the extremest savor. Even had all Uncle Coffin's sins been known, he would have been forgiven.

Captain Leezur put on Vesty's shawl for her:

"Sence I'm the han'somest man in the room," he gurgled.

"So you are!" The tender, girlish light of her great eyes was on him; no kind look for me.

"Vesty!" Captain Leezur whispered, but a whisper that could not be dark and secret to save itself; I heard: "why don't ye speak to major? Ye ain't spoke tew words tew him the hull endurin' evenin'."

She darted a dark flash at him too.

"Vesty! Vesty!" said the beloved old man, in that whisper that so thoroughly deceived him--"I know 't I set ye up to this bean-pole business. But it won't dew for both on ye to be bean-poles. One or the other on ye 's got to kile. Neow, Vesty, ye know 't major 's got some misfortin's in his looks 't makes him beound to be preoud; ye wouldn't have him other ways. Ye see, Vesty, he don't know 't----"

She stopped him with a haughty look.

"An' in course," said he, "I don't know, neither. But it dews make me feel dreadful t' think I've started sech a rank bean-pole farm as this, when I've all'as told ye, my little gal, 't we'd ort'er use moderation"--Captain Leezur wiped his blessed shining eyes--"moderation in all things, even in passnips--I have said--an' neow I change it to bean-poles."

Vesty's mouth quivered; her eyes looked fit to enfold the whole sinful world for his sake.

"Good-night, major!" she said coldly; but she had spoken. And, beautiful and tall, she passed out of sight.

As Captain Leezur turned to me, in spite of the dark duplicity of his conduct toward me, my heart gushed out to him unawares. I grasped his hand silently.

XXV

IN THE LANE

I met her on the morrow in the lane. She would have passed me with a mere morning salutation, but I spoke to her. "I will tell the story at least," I thought, "before I go away."

"Vesty," said I timidly. Even the handsomest of the Basins were timid in putting the question; and I, so miserable, and believing it not to be a question at all, but only a confession, was choking.