Chapter 7

I had my hat and was slipping out on my errand to the boat. Vesty, with evident distress, was about to explain: I put my finger to my lips with another side glance of such meaning that she kept still and even smiled again.

I called a man and brought him to the house for Mrs. Forrester's directions. He soon returned with the rugs, which Vesty accepted for her baby as well as she could; Uncle Benny all the time singing gleefully.

The party moved to go; in passing through the door Mrs. Forrester dropped her handkerchief. I picked it up and handed it to her.

"Thank you, my poor fellow," she said; "you have the manners of a prince!" and put a coin in my hand--a piece of silver. I took the money.

Vesty was still, after they were gone, her hands over her face. I knew well what thoughts she was thinking.

"Do not go," she said to me, and her voice was like the low cry of her own child; "you are smiling still." She looked at me with strained eyes.

"Well, perhaps because I am glad Mrs. Garrison would not adopt you and take you away from the Basin; perhaps because I am glad no handsome rake will ever ogle you as our lisping young man did Mrs. Notely Garrison."

"It meant nothing between them all," said Vesty, her hand over her eyes; "you know that better than I. It is only the way they do."

"It meant nothing! It is only the way they do."

I put away the violin Notely's fingers had so lately touched. The tears stole down Vesty's cheeks and trembled on her lips.

"He does not care," she said; "that is the worst! He does not care as he did once."

"For what, Vesty?"

"For anything but having a good time and making fun with people, and all that. He used to talk with me--oh, so high and noble, about things!" Her eyes flashed, then darkened again with pain.

"Ay, I know he has seen the model and been pierced with it. He can never forget; he will come back."

"The model?"

"You know once there was a Master who was determined all his people should paint him a picture after a great model he had set before them. It seemed not to be an attractive model; it seemed full of pain and loss; the world looked to be full of other designs more desirable.

"So that there were hardly any but that wandered from it, to paint pictures of their own; there was hardly, if ever, a great or a true and patient artist--for they are the same thing.

"Some found the colors at hand so brilliant, and were so possessed with the beauty of dreams of their own, that they spent long years in painting for themselves splendid houses in bewitching landscapes, red passion roses, and heaps of glittering gold, that looked like treasures, but were nothing.

"Some painted dark, sad glimpses of earth and sea and sky that were called beautiful, the skill in them was so perfect. Looking at them, one saw only the drear night drawing on.

"But there were some who had no great dreams of their own to work out, or if they had they turned from them with obedience above all: and many, many, broken-hearted from their failure in their own designs, who turned now to follow the Master's model. And it was strange, but as they regarded it intently and faithfully there grew to be in it for them a beauty ever more and more surpassing all earthly dreams.

"They were dim of sight and trembling of hand; often they mixed the colors wrong, they spilled them, they made great blotches and mistakes; but they washed them out with tears and went to work again, yearning pitifully after the model; in hope or despair, living or dying, their fingers still moved at the task as they kept looking there.

"And always the Master knew. This was the strangest of all, that some of the dimmest, wavering outlines, some of the saddest blotted details, were the beautifullest in his eyes, because he read just the depth of the endeavor underneath; until, in this light, as he lifted it up, some poor, weary, tearful, bungled work shone fairer than the sun!"

Keeping faithful watch of the clock, Uncle Benny at the appointed hour had given up the baby to Vesty, to go and bring the children home from school. We heard him in the distance still singing joyfully his "Sail away to Galilee!"

"There is a faithful artist," I said, and smiled; "would God I had come up to him, with his unceasing watch over the little ones! And Blind Rodgers too, who never complains, and who will not trouble anybody, but keeps his life so spotless."

Vesty lay very still. "Do you think Notely was painting a picture of his own?" she said. "Do you think I was proud because he could paint such pictures of his own, and wanted him to? You said he had been pierced with it"--she was talking to herself now--"he will come back."

"He will come back."

"Who are you?" she said, her Basin eyes turned clear and full upon me. "You let them call you my servant!"

"Not because I was afflicted with humility, but because I was proud and happy to be that. And because it was a good joke: you do not mind my enjoying a good joke, I hope? Then you do not know how happy it made me; I have had so much done for me, and have been so little useful."

Vesty was not satisfied. Her clear, impersonal gaze held me with a look fearless of its compassion, single and direct.

"I wish you would not leave the Basin," she said. "I am never--I am never happy when you are away."

"God bless you, my little girl!" I said, and hobbled away to finish the housework, but my heart seemed to take on a pair of pure white wings, like dove's wings. I forgot withal that I was lame.

XI

ANOTHER NAIL

"Chipadees sing pretty," said Captain Pharo, drawing a match along the leg of his trousers and lighting his pipe, as we stood amid the song of birds in the lane--"but robins is noisy creeturs, always at the same old tune--poo! poo! hohum! Wal, wal--

he paused there, having his pipe well going.

"Yes," said I, gulping down some unworthy emotions of my own; "yes, indeed."

"Come down to see ef ye wouldn't like t' go up t' the Point with us, t' git a nail put in the hoss's shu-u?"

"Oh, yes, thank you! by all means," I replied.

"My woman heered--poo! poo!--

--she heered 't there was goin' to be a show up thar' to-night--some play-actor folks. 'Ten Nights in a Ba-ar Room'"--the captain took the pipe out of his mouth and yawned with affected unconcern. "I've heered o' worse names for a show; but ye know what women-folks is when there 's any play-actin' around. They're jest like sheep next to a turnip patch."

"Are they?"

"Oh, by clam! ye don't know nothin' 'bout female grass yit, major--nothin'. Bars can't shet 'em out." I followed his sad gaze to the west, and we sighed in unison.

"By the way, how 's your show stock gittin' along, major?"

"My show stock?"

"Why, sartin; we thinks all the more on ye, ef that c'd be, for havin' some business. Ye see, the way my woman found it out, she runs over to Lunette's every mail day and helps her sort the mail, 'nd she said all the letters 't come directed to 'Mr. Paul Henry' had a mess o' wax run onto the fold of every envelope with a pictur' stamped inter it o' a couple o' the cur'osest-lookin' creeturs; said 'twas jest the head an' necks of 'em an' they looked to be retchin' up ter eat out o' the same soup plate; said 't must be your stock to the circus; for business folks often has their business picturs put on outside their envelopes, ye know, and jedgin' by the cur'osity of 'em, she thought they must be doin' pretty well by ye."

"Oh, they are, captain," I sighed; "yes, they're doing pretty well by me."

"Wal now, ef you've got a comf'tably good thing, major, be content with it; 'tain't easy to git onto a new job nowadays. Ain't there some pertick'lar spear o' grass ye'd like t' have set on the back seat with ye?" he continued cheerfully. "She rides easier for havin' consid'rable ballast, ye know."

"I don't know of any. Mrs. Lester is away at her daughter-in-law's."

"Hain't ye never thought--poo! poo! hohum!--wal, wal--

hain't ye never thought o' Miss Pray?"

"In what way, captain?"

"Wal, as a--poo! poo!--

as a pertick'lar spear, ye know?"

"No."

"In course human nature turns natchally to pink and white clover, like Vesty; but I tell ye, major, when it comes to a honest jedgment o' grass thar' 's lots o' comfort arter all to be took out o' old red timothy. Old red timothy goes to shutin' right up straight an' minds her own business. She ain't a-tryin' so many o' these d--d ructions on ye. My foot 's some better," said he, lifting the maimed member; "but she ain't yit what she use ter be. It 'u'd make a home for ye, 'ithout payin' no board, an' ef ye got red o' payin' yer board ye wouldn't mind ef she didn't treat ye quite so well--for that's the way 'ith all female grass, clover 'n' all, when they once gits spliced onto ye. But 'ith what ye gits from yer show ye c'd buy a hoss, an' when the wind 's in the nor'-east ye c'd tack away from home on some arrant--see? But don't arsk her, 'less ye means ter stand by it, major, for the women-folks has got to settin' onaccountable store by ye, ye kind o' humors of 'em so."

I limped down the lane to invite Miss Pray on our excursion, with light feet. Was it the air again, or was it the new consciousness that I was developing into a beloved and coveted beau?

I stepped into the cottage through the low window, as I often did. At the same moment the cover of the wood-box flew up, and I beheld the rosy, good-natured visage of Miss Pray's orphan girl looking out: she put her finger on her lip.

"Sh!"

"What is it?" I said.

She pointed upward. I saw on the long spike which held the horseshoe over the door a pail of water so delicately hung that whoever first entered there must receive its contents in one fell unmitigated deluge upon the crown.

"Sh! It 's Wesley's" (her fellow-orphan) "it 's Wesley's birthday. I ain't got no present to give him, so I'm going to _souze_ him with cold water: he 's bringin' in some wood--there 's steps! Sh!"

She ducked into the wood-box, which had subterranean channels of escape, with anticipated delight, and put down the cover, leaving me alone in the room with the approaching victim and in the unenviable position of appearing to be the sole perpetrator of this malign deed.

I had the merest time to master this idea, when the door swung in upon its hinges, and not Wesley, but Miss Pray herself, stood before me, a mad and a blighted object.

I gazed at her, horror-struck, and was endeavoring to speak, when Wesley, staggering in behind her with his arms full of wood, came to my relief. "O Miss Pray, 'twan't major, honest 'twan't, nor 'twan't me, Miss Pray: 'twas that Belle O'Neill, an' she 's mos' got to the graves by this time. I seed her runnin', through the windy. O Lord! O Miss Pray! how wet you looks when you're as wet as you be now, Miss Pray!"

"Indeed it was not meant for you," I cried. "Belle meant it for a birthday jest on Wesley."

"Oh, I wish it had b'en, Miss Pray," gasped poor Wesley, with ill-timed sympathy; "I'm so much more used to bein' wet 'n you be."

It was doubtful toward which Miss Pray was waxing most warm--the recusant Belle O'Neill, or the stupid, open-mouthed Wesley--when I stepped in at this juncture and entreated her with the Kobbes' invitation.

"I'll go," said she, with evident satisfaction gleaming even through her dripping state, "'s soon 's I've changed my do's and whipped Belle O'Neill."

During the former process I volunteered, as one whom she would trust, to watch for Belle, and lure her, if possible, to the house. I repeatedly saw that damsel's head peering out from behind the gravestones of Miss Pray's ancestors, down by the sea-wall, and making signals to me to know if advance were safe.

And every time, prostituting sublime justice to a weak sense of compassion, I waved her back to her fastness until after we should be gone.

"Shall I tell her 't you'll whip her after you git back, Miss Pray?" said Wesley, with deep relish.

"No," said Miss Pray, who had now appeared, resplendent in holiday attire. "Do you want her to run away, and leave me without help? All'as keep your mouth shet--that 's the safest commands for you; all'as keep your mouth shet."

Wesley closed that wide organ, with a look of wondering surprise.

Miss Pray was lean and resplendent, not gray and comfortable like my friend Mrs. Lester. There was no blueberry "turnover" to devour. As we passed over the jolting road I clung desperately to the carriage bars.

But it appeared that the captain had an abnormal design, before entering the Point, of descending into a shallow branch of Crooked River, there to wash the mud of past happy epochs from the carriage.

"Wal, Cap'n Pharo Kobbe," said his young wife, stultified with amaze at this proceeding, "I should like to know what's took you!"

"Adm'r'l bet, spell ago, 't he could scrape twenty-five pound o' mud off'n my two-seated kerridge next time I driv her to the Point. Jest keep yer eyes up the road," said Captain Pharo, standing, diligently and furtively swashing, with his unconscious boots submerged in water, "t' see that thar' ain't nobody lookin'."

"What 's he goin' to give ye, if ye win the bet, cap'n?" said his lively wife.

The captain cast me a dark and fleeting wink over his shoulder. "Poo! poo!" he sang: "hohum!

anybody in sight, major?"

"No; the road is all clear."

"What 's he goin' to give ye, Cap'n Pharo Kobbe, if ye win the bet?"

"Ye needn't keep on singin', Captain Pharo Kobbe; for the sake o' the company, I shan't ask ye nothin' more."

Saddened by this blight, his evil and surreptitious deed being accomplished, Captain Pharo backed out of the stream.

But the triumphant smile returned to his countenance as he advanced on the Point and found Admiral 'S I Sums-it-up sitting within the porch of the grocery with other of his townsmen.

"Adm'r'l," said Captain Pharo, "I want ye to step down here and scrape twenty-five pound o' mud off'n my two-seated kerridge."

The admiral regarded us fixedly for some moments, fireless pipe in expressionless mouth, and then rose and descended to us. The women had already contemptuously left our company and gone about their shopping.

"Come along, Kobbe!" said the admiral, "and bring"--he glanced with calm, meaningless vision at me--"bring all the rest on ye."

He led us under the loud sign of a tin shop, where, after sedate speculation in the matter of purchasing a tea-kettle with a consuming leak in the bottom, he cleared his throat. "'S I sums it up," said he to the proprietor, without further utterance; that individual looked doubtfully at me.

"Oh, he 's all right," said Captain Pharo; "he 's a cousin o' mine in the show business."

This introduction proving more than satisfactory, we were ushered into a small room apart and the door locked behind us: but missing Uncle Coffin's inspiration in this case, and remembering the quality of the liquid, I made a smart show of drinking, without in the least diminishing the contents of the bottle.

Not so, however, good Captain Pharo: from this time on his conduct waxed sunny and genial, as well as irresponsible of the grave duties which had hitherto afflicted him.

"Thar' 's a lot o' winter cabbage, 't was sp'ilin' down in my suller, 't I put in onto the kerridge floor, major," said he; "ef ye're mind ter sell 'em out for what ye can git, to harves, ye're welcome. Sell 'em out to hulls, by clam!" he called after me. "I ain't so mean 't I carn't help a young man along a little."

I returned to the carriage and arranged my fading cabbages as attractively as possible, offset by the glories of the star bed-quilt; and whether it was because the news had already spread that I was in the show business, or by reason of some of those occult charms at which Captain Pharo had hinted, I was soon surrounded by a lively group of women.

"Here 's one 't ain't worth but two cents," said one fair creature, holding up a specimen of my stock, whose appearance beside her own fresh beauty caused me to writhe for shame. "I shan't give a mite more for her."

"O madam, is she worth that?" I denied impulsively.

The woman, speechless, dropped the cabbage to the earth.

"Here 's a nickel, anyway, for your bein' so honest," she exclaimed, soon afterward.

I took it with a bow. And here sordid considerations ceased, as they had begun: my pious emotions toward the sex conquered, and I became not the base purveyor but the elegant distributor of cabbages, right and left, only with murmured apologies for gifts so unworthy.

I was now evidently classified as belonging high in the spectacular drama; when the horse, having finished the meal of cracked corn he had been enjoying by the roadside, with the reins thrown slack over his neck, suddenly lifted his head with an air of arriving at some instant conclusion and started merrily down the road.

Too lame to jump from a moving vehicle, my first emotions of dismay gradually disappeared, however, as I found that our passage was not disturbed even by the most untoward outward events. For a base-ball from the bat of some players in an adjoining field hit the noble animal full in the flank without occasioning any alarm to his gait or divergence from his resolved purpose.

He turned down the Artichoke road and went straight to Uncle Coffin's. "I've come to take you and Aunt Salomy to the show," I said, lifted out and knocked hither and thither by my friend in his tender ecstasy.

"Cruisin' out on the high seas without no rudder, you--you young spark, you!" he cried delightedly. "You're 'most too full o' the devil t' exist!" he exclaimed at last, holding me out at arm's-length admiringly.

Proud now of my wickedness as I had formerly been of my charms, I steered my friends to the Point by the conventional means of the rudder. Captain Pharo, who had been so congenially occupied that he had not even missed me, heaped encomiums upon me, and receiving Uncle Coffin almost with tears of joy in his eyes, led him away to the tin shop.

I secured more cracked corn for the horse and shed-room, where I tied him with retrospective security. There being no restaurant, I obtained some biscuits and cheese, and with these and six tickets for the very front row, Aunt Salomy and Mrs. Kobbe and Miss Pray and I stole early into the hall and sat us down to rest.

There were already figures as for a rehearsal behind the curtain; indeed, that thin structure revealed angry silhouettes, and loud voices reached us.

"Sh!" came from that source: "or them fools down there, eatin' crackers an' cheese, 'll hear ye."

"I don't care if the whole town hears me," replied a passionate female voice. "You said I could have twenty dollars, and now you won't give it to me. I won't play to-night till I do have it--hear that!"

"Sh! or I'll shake ye! Don't make a fool o' yourself, Maud. Wait till I get to-night's receipts----"

"I won't! I'd like to see you shake me; ha! ha!"

Here the angry figures became plastic and tilted at each other menacingly; the woman seized something and threw it; there was a crash.

Aunt Salomy choked placidly over her cracker crumbs. Mrs. Kobbe gazed with faithful interest.

Soon the very tall and hard-looking young man who had sold me the tickets came down from behind the curtain, with a hang-dog air, and his handkerchief bound about his head, and returned to the office at the door.

Almost at the same moment Captain Pharo and Uncle Coffin walked fearlessly up the aisle, their familiar hats on their heads, their pipes in harmonious glowing action, and sat down beside us with beams of recognition.

The hard young man, who appeared to be pecuniary manager as well as leading star of the show, came to us. "No smoking here!" he said, severely.

"No smokin'!" replied Captain Pharo. "Ye'd orter put it on yer plackards then! D'ye s'pose I'd come to yer show ef I'd known that? Come along, Coffin! I'm goin' ter hang out outside, by clam!

"No singing, either, sir, on the part of the audience. This company is from Boston, sir."

"Is she?" said Captain Pharo, with blighting sarcasm, new-lighting his pipe preparatory to leaving the hall; "I thought she was from Jaffy!"

"Dodrabbit ye, Pharo!" said Uncle Coffin, wirily folding his powerful arms; "keep yer seat, Pharo, and keep yer pipe. Ef any man from Boston, or any other man, wants ter take the pipe outer my mouth, or outer Pharo Kobbe's mouth, let 'im come on an' try it!"

At this opportunity, I silently pressed a coin of such meaning into the manager's hand that he skipped gracefully past us to the stage, where he proceeded to explain--while the ribs of court-plaster with which he had endeavored to conceal his wounds kept constantly falling upon the floor--that, owing to the unavoidable illness of some of the actors, he should be obliged to give us a choice variety entertainment instead of the play advertised.

Captain Pharo and Uncle Coffin, not yet comprehending this idea, and smoking triumphantly with their hats on, listened to several ranting recitations from the wife who had so inopportunely defaced her husband's visage; but when, after a brief recess, she again appeared with a stage bow, Captain Pharo looked blankly at Uncle Coffin.

"Where 's the ba-ar, Coffin?"

"I kind o' suspicion they've giv' it up, Pharo; goin' to have recitationers 'nstead."

"Curfew _shall_ not ring to-night!" yelled the woman on the stage, with a leap of several feet perpendicularly.

"By clam!" cried poor Captain Pharo, rising; "I don' know what she is, but she is goin' to ring, and she 's goin' to ring loud too, by clam! I come here to see 'Ten Nights in a Ba-ar Room,' I didn't come here t' see contortioners and recitationers. Give us any more o' yer----"

Here, an onion, thrown from the rear of the room by some sympathetic partner in Captain Pharo's woes, came whizzing over our heads and just missed the woman, by good aim; she retreated without the formality of her usual sweeping bow. The manager began hastily to get together his stage setting for the play. A table and a bottle were first produced; Captain Pharo and Uncle Coffin began to nudge each other with choice anticipation of the advancing drama, when another onion, thrown with unerring vision, took the bottle and shattered it, with its contents, upon the stage floor, directly under our faces.

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 grass 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 ashore 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?"