Chapter 8

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 nobly," I said.

"Belle O'Neill," said Miss Pray, before we finally sought that repose which is the guerdon of all nobly 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 fishing 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 anchored here off shore, 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 fishing. 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 God 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 passion; 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 God, 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.

Notely watched that struggle, saw the impulse fade upon her face into a white resolve; watched her keenly meanwhile with tumultuous hope.

"Vesty, once when we were little more than children, we were playing on Ladle Rock and I fell. You did not leave me, frightened; insensible as I was, you bathed my face and stayed by me. When I came to myself my head was in your lap. You had on a brown cotton frock, made in an old-womanish grave fashion, and you were looking down at me. From that moment all my life changed--who can explain it? I was a child in my feeling toward you no longer, with childish thoughts. I loved you--loved you as I love you now--but you have robbed me of my life."

"No," she said. That sad fire from outside herself came back to her. "You have only been denied one pleasure the more that you wanted, and that would not have been so dear to you long if you had not lost it. Life is above that, you used to tell me, but you have forgotten."

"Rather, I have grown wiser," he said, but for the instant he set his clear, fine face away from her. "It is a distorted notion that our existence here is for cold denial, from however pure an imagination. It is better to run with life, to follow joyfully the great trend of nature."

He looked at her: her staid, unreproachful eyes, her calm and holy face, smote him.

"My pleasure-friends, as you call them, say that the Basins are simple. That is a superficial observation;" he laughed with despair, and proceeded to fill his pipe. "The Basins are like a rock."

"Notely," said she very slowly then, "your face is dear to me as this little one upon my breast; it eats into my heart."

All life's sorrow looked through her, and a faith, a purpose, stronger than life. Notely cast his misery from him with a sigh; the game was over.

"Saint Vesta," said he simply, "I have lost you; that is the sad fact, and I accept it. Still, since you care for me some, I shall be a little merry. Come to my ball--Gurdon promised me you would both come."

XIII

CAPTAIN LEEZUR RELATES HOW MIS' GARRISON ATE CROW

"It 's said," said Captain Leezur, who sat on the log fondly applying his deer-bone toothpick, which had been restored to him for a season, "'t ye keep yer mouth shet, and ye won't eat no crow."

His smile embraced the heavens, as the source of such philosophy, with transcendent admiration.

"That 's figgeral language, ye know. Have a narvine lozenge. I all'as enj'ys 'em with a friend more'n what I dew meltin' on 'em deown alone."

We sucked deliciously.

"Afore I got my dispersition moderated deown inter the shape she is neow, I was dreadful kind o' sly and ongodly abeout cuttin' up tricks," he continued, his countenance now conveying only the tranquillity of one restored and forgiven.

"Mis' Garrison, Notely's mother, she was all'as puttin' on airs tew the Basins, 's if they was beneath her; and when they'd first begun to live over there to the Neck, she sent a man deown t' me, 't said Mis' Garrison had 'ordered' a pair o' partridge on me.

"'What?' says I to the man.

"'Mis' Garrison said t' order a couple o' partridge on ye,' says he, 'an' she wants 'em at tew o'clock.'

"'All right,' says I; 'yew go home an' tell her 't she shall have that 'ere order filled eout complete,' says I.

"So I went eout and gunned one partridge and one old crow, 't had been ha'ntin' my corn patch ever senct I could remember, so 't he was jest as familiar tew me as the repair on the slack o' my britches, and I dressed 'em both, dreadful tasty an' slick--they was jest 'beout the same size dressed--an' rigged 'em eout esthetiky with some strips o' pink caliker; and 'long at the 'p'inted time the man he come deown arter 'em.

"'Yew tell Mis' Garrison,' says I, ''t birds is so thick 'reound my premmuses this year I couldn't think o' chargin' nothin' for 'em, 'specially to an old Basin like her!'

"For in them days, 'fore I got moderated, I didn't mind p'intin' hints at nobody, or weoundin' their feelin's, 'specially ef it jibed along in with playin' some ongodly trick on 'em."

The joy of a ransomed soul played across Captain Leezur's features.

"Wal, Notely was areound a day or tew arter-wards--Notely an' me was great mates--'nd says I, 'Heow'd yer mother like them birds I sent up tew 'er?' says I. 'Why, one on 'em was r'al good, Uncle Leezur,' says he, 'and one on 'em'"--Captain Leezur glanced cautiously toward the house-door before he continued--"'one on 'em was tough as the devil's kite-string; tough as a d--d old crow!' says he.

"Wal, I made it up to Note in more ways 'n one, for him and me was great mates; but I never let on 'beout that pertickaler mess o' birds. Keep yer mouth shet, ye know, and ye won't eat no crow--that is, 'less somebody 's been playin' some ongodly trick on ye."

Captain Leezur never laughed aloud: his smile simply widened and broadened until it became a scintillating sun, without the disgrace of cachinnation.

"Neow there 's all'as a meanin' in figgeral language," he continued, "an' when Mis' Garrison got set ag'inst Note and Vesty's marryin', jest 'cause Vesty was poor an' a Basin, an' set ter work ter break it off by fair means or by feoul, she got her meouth open for a good-sized ondigestible mess o' crow.

"In figgeral language; for I don't reck'lect jest the exac' date when she did r'a'ly eat crow; 'twas a good many years ago, 'n' I wouldn't have her hear of it neow for nothin'. I'm natch'ally ashamed o' them ongodly tricks neow--'nd besides, it 'u'd lay harder on her stommick 'n a high-school grammar."

"I won't tell her," I said. "I'm hardly acquainted with her, anyway."

"I'd give all I've got, every mite, ef it c'd help save Note," said Captain Leezur, a tear trickling down his sun-face. "All things is good ef we use 'em in moderation; but we've got ter use moderation, in eatin' an' drinkin', an' lobster sallid--yes, an' even in passnips. Nothin' 'll dew but the same old rewl, even in passnips.

"I heered voices deown to the shore last night," he continued, with a sort of yearning confidence toward me, so that I bent my ear nearer, with some of his own sorrow. "I reckoned one on 'em was Notely's voice, talkin' and larfin' as hilar'ous as ef 'twas sun-up. So I went deown there, and there was Note and one o' them fellers with him, each on 'em with a stiff tod o' whiskey aboard, a-pullin' there for dear life, an' the dory anchored fast as fast could be to the staple!

"They was lookin' for lan'marks and pullin' and sheoutin' and larfin'--'twas kinder moonlight, ye know--and one on 'em says, 'Seems ter me 't takes a cussed long time t' git to the Neck to-night,' says he. I sot there an' watched 'em; knew 'twouldn't do 'em no harm t' pull, knew 'twas doin' 'em good an' steadyin' of 'em. By an' by, I ups an' says, 'Ship ahoy!'

"'Hello!' says Note.

"'Why don't ye weigh anchor?' says I.

"Wal, when that idee come deown atop of 'em, ye never see a couple sobered so quick as they was. They giv' three cheers, an' nothin' 'd dew but I must git into the dory an' go up to the Neck with 'em.

"Wal, I had my objec'; an' when they took me in t' treat me, the rest o' Note's company was settin' 'reound there, an' I ups an' says, 'Jest one glass, an' ef _yew_ takes _any_ more I won't tetch even that,' says I. 'Yew've had enough--tew much,' says I. 'Moderation in all things,' says I, 'even as low deown as passnips.'

"They all giv' me another three cheers; but they didn't drink no more. An' nothin' 'd dew but I must set deown, an' then nothin' 'd dew but I must give 'em my views on moderation!"

Captain Leezur did swallow a little hard with the effort not to appear too highly flattered!

"So I sot there an' giv' 'em my views on moderation. I must say for 'em, they appeared dreadful interested; they sot kind o' leanin' forrards, with their meouths not more 'n harf--'n' sartin not more 'n a quarter ways--shet; an' when I'd got through, they giv' me another reousin' three cheers ag'in.

"They told me all abeout Lot's wife, tew," said Captain Leezur, with grateful seriousness; "they've been great travellers, ye know; all abeout the appearance o' that location where she sot, an' heow it looked arfter she'd got up an' went, an' the aspec's o' Jaffy, an' all them interestin' partickalers, more'n what I ever heered from anybody afore."

I looked at Captain Leezur to see if no suspicion of earthly treachery was on his sun-blessed visage. None.

I lifted my hat with a nameless reverence too deep for words, and left him, still smiling upward.

XIV

"TAR-A-TA!" OF THE TRUMPET

Fluke played, with the dense black hair tossing above his handsome eyes, but Gurdon with a calm brow, though he too loved the music and dancing.

"Go and have a turn with Vesty yourself," said Fluke; "we'll keep up fiddling, change about, with the organ."

For Notely, studying every heart-throb of the Basins, had had a little parlor organ brought in for the night and put up in place of his piano; at it sat Mrs. Judah Kobbe, cousin and guest of the Pharo Kobbes, playing with such lively spirit and abandon that the very lamps danced upon the organ-brackets in untripping time with the feet of the dancers on the floor.

I had already detected in the tone of society toward Mr. and Mrs. Judah Kobbe that they were awesome cosmopolites from some source. I now learned that they were from a crowded mart called Machias. Captain Pharo also told me mysteriously, in the pauses of his pipe, "'t they was l'arneder 'n any fish 't swims;" so I gazed at them with wonder from a distance, but did not much dream that it would be for me to speak with them.

All along the edges of the floor were strewn children and babies, comfortably wrapped and laid to sleep; the habit of the Basins, who had no servants at home wherewith to leave them.

Notely Garrison had led the dance with Vesty; now she sat rocking her baby, near Gurdon, who turned to them with a smile and swept a softer strain now and then, as when he played them to sleep at home.

"Introduce me to the 'mezzo-tint' study yonder, the mediaeval picture over there, rocking her infant, back of the fiddlers."

Notely slightly turned from his fellow-reveller, flushing.

"There are pretty girls enough here for you to dance with, Sid; she would not like it. They are such simple people they would not understand. She is married, you see."

"You danced with her."

"Oh, I am an old friend."

"Tar-a-ta! tar-a-ta!" went Captain Judah's trumpet, and I looked up to see what new event its blast denoted. For, Captain Judah was a stage driver, and having brought his horn along as a signal compliment to the occasion, he was now conducting the first stages of the ball with those loud flourishes and elegant social convenances which only those sophisticated by extreme culture are supposed to understand.

"Tar-a-ta! tar-a-ta!"

I saw that Vesty and Gurdon had risen to dance together. Vesty wrapped and laid her sleeping baby among the others, and Gurdon stepped out to perform first that solitary jig or shuffle which is demanded of every householder among the Basins, before he can lead his partner to the dance.

Notely and the young man he had called "Sid" watched him shaking his long legs, his heavy, noble face perfectly sincere and unembarrassed; for was it not the ancient, honorable custom of the Basins?

"Stolid cart-horse, by Jove!" sneered Sid, casting a glowing glance at Vesty, "for such a Venus!"

Notely did not like the tone. "There 's some stolid granite in my quarry," he snarled softly; "but it 's everlasting good granite, all the same, Sid."

"You've been knocked over, I see," said the irrepressible Sid, smiling intelligently at him. "Well, I'm off for the jig."

"Tar-a-ta! tar-a-ta!"

The trumpet punctually announced the appearance of so much colorless linen and broadcloth on the floor; but the Basins, who were fine, gazed at his severe costume with tender pity.

"Sid," appreciating this, dared not laugh: he endeavored to redeem this lack of beauty by a display of his white bediamonded hand on his watch-guard, as he entreated a partner for the dance, but he was not held for much; that was evident.

Now and then in the reel he touched Vesty's hand, or swung with her, and he stared at her consistently and immoderately throughout; but always for him the holy lids were low over her eyes.

My heart exulted something like the next blast of the trumpet; I turned to look. Vesty was safe.

"Tar-a-ta! tar-a-ta!"

But Captain Pharo needed no stirring strain to his consciousness as he walked, with scarcely perceptible limp, to the middle of the floor.

That flowered jacket, the arnica bloom glowing like sunrise on the back! Those new trousers, of "middling" sacks, "Brand No. 1" proudly distinct upon the right leg!

"Give me sea-room here, give me sea-room," said the hero; "and jest wait till I git my spavins warmed up a little!"

A wide, clear swath was cut from the billows that surrounded Captain Pharo.

"Now then," said he, pulling his pipe from his pocket, and drawing a match in the usual informal way; "Poo! poo! hohum!--

strike up somethin' lively over there, Gurd. Give us 'The Wracker's Darter,' by clam!"

Gurdon, who had returned to relieve Fluke at the violin, good-naturedly struck up "The Wrecker's Daughter."

"Can't ye put a little sperrit into 'er, Gurd? Is this 'ere a fun'al? That 's it! Now then--'Touch and go is a good pilot.'"

With these words, Captain Pharo sprang with ox-like levity from the floor, and amid the giddy swiftness of the music I was occasionally conscious of hearing his mailed heels flow together with a clash that made the rafters ring. He descended at last ominously, but when the reverberations died away I looked, and saw that he was whole.

Notely came over and shook hands with him, laid an arm proudly on his proud shoulder, and led him away to the "mess" room, where his stewards were busy.

"Dodrabbit ye, Pharo!" cried a voice from the fondest of the Artichokes, seizing him with an exultant pride which he affected to hide under derogatory language; "was that you I seen in there jest now, stompin' the frescoes off'n the ceilin'?"

"Altogether most entertaining jig that has been danced this evening," said one of Notely's broadcloth guests, very superciliously.

"Oh, I hain't danced none yit," said Captain Pharo, too confident to show contempt; "only warmin' my spavins;" and he heartlessly turned the complete flower in view for the further annihilation of the gentleman in black.

"Ef I c'd 'a' got on my scuffs," said Captain Leezur, his sun-visage showing against the crimson back of an easy-chair, "I don't know but what I sh'd been 'most tempted ter jine the darnce myself. But no; I couldn't pervail with 'em--so long sence I've wrarstled with 'em--so I come right 'long in my felts."

"No, ye can't dance 'The Wracker's Darter,' that is, not as she orter be danced, in felts," said Captain Pharo; "she 's a tune 't wants the emphasis brought right down onto her; felts won't do it, nor scuffs neither."

"That off foot o' mine kind o' b'longs to the church, anyway," said Captain Leezur sweetly; "has for years; don't pain me much as I knows on, but she ain't seound: if t'other one starts off kind o' skittish she 's sartin to hold back----"

"Ye'd orter be thankful 't ye only has to contend with natch'al diserbilities," interposed Captain Pharo, "'n' don't have any o' these d--d ructions played on ye."

"Oh, by the way, what are 'ructions'?" inquired the guest of supercilious temperament.

"Le' me see," said Captain Pharo; "you're the one 't Note said was from Washin'ton, ain't ye? Washin'ton, D.C.?"

"Certainly."

"P'litical centre o' the United States of Ameriky?"

"Why, yes."

"An' you don't know what ructions be!"