Chapter 9

Loud laughter greeted this sally; only the man who had been in California sat moody, his basilisk eye fixed upon me.

"Then I'll tell ye what ructions be," proceeded Captain Pharo, breathing stertorously through his pipe; "it's repealin' all our optional acts, for one thing! We can't institoot an optional act down here, but what you go an' repeal it!"

"Oh, stuff!" said the high and hot-headed young man, quite taken off his level by the laughter round him; "I don't either!"

"I say ye do!" said Captain Pharo, waxing more and more wroth; "ye sets some feller t' work there, 't never see salt water, t' make our laws for us; 'lows us to ketch all the spawn lobsters and puts injunctions onter the little ones: like takin' people when they gits to be sixteen or twenty year old, 'n' choppin' their heads off--yer race is goin' to multiply almighty fast, ain't it?"

"I hadn't observed any lack of increase in your amiable race, sir."

"Ye hadn't, hadn't yer?" said Captain Pharo, in the voice of a smouldering volcano, laying a fresh match to his pipe.

"Moderation," liquidly pealed in the voice of Captain Leezur--"moderation 's the rewl----"

"'N' I'll tell ye of another optional act o' ourn 't ye repeals; but ye can tell 'em 't we git it jest the same--though it 's racktified 'tell it 's p'ison."

"Ye can't all'as git it, even racktified," said Shamgar: "onct when the boat wa'n't in for a couple o' weeks, I got kind o' desp'rit over a pain in my chist; hadn't nothin' but two bottles o' 'Lightnin' External Rheumatiz Cure,' so I took 'em straight. They said 't for a spell thar' I was the howlin'est case o' drunk they ever see."

"The wu'st case o' 'nebr'ancy this State 's ever known," said Captain Dan Kirtland, "was a man up to Callis jail, 't had been 'bleedged to take a spree on 'lemon extract;' he sot fire t' everything he could lay his hand to."

"Look a' that, will ye?" said Captain Pharo to the haughty Washingtonian; "yit you don't know nothin' 'bout ructions. You can repeal every optional act 't a man makes, but you ain't got no idee o' ructions----"

Captain Pharo's voice had now reached such a pathetic and eloquent pitch that Captain Judah left his trumpet in the ball-room and joined us, in time to mingle with the cheers that were still further discomfiting the high and hot-headed young man.

"What you talkin' about?" retorted the latter through his dazzling white teeth. "I'm not in politics."

"Why didn't ye say so, then?" said Captain Pharo calmly, "and not keep me standin' here wastin' my breath on ye?"

"Moderation," sweetly chimed in the voice of Captain Leezur--"moderation in all things, even as low down as passnips."

The man who had been in California had been constantly drawing near me, but Captain Judah, anticipating him, was already at my side.

"You're a stranger," said he: "perhaps you never heard any of Angie Fay--Angie Fay Kobbe's poetry?"

He had a rosy face: in spite of former long sea-wear, not blowzed, but delicately tinted; he snuffled when he talked in a way which I could only define as classical; and it was admitted that his nosegay vest and blue coat, as far as tender refinement went, far surpassed anything in the room.

"That's Angie Fay Kobbe, my wife, at the organ. Ten years ago, when I was still cruising, I found and rescued her from a southern cyclone!"

I murmured astonishment, though in truth something of a cyclonic atmosphere still hovered about Mrs. Kobbe, not only in her method of performance on the organ, but in her sparkling features, young and beautiful, her wide-flowing curled hair.

"How old does she seem to you to be, sir?"

"She looks to me," I said, with honesty, "to be eighteen or twenty--twenty-five at the most."

"Sir, she is forty!" said Captain Judah proudly. Angie Fay shot him a bewitching glance through the open door.

"She is not only a skilled performer on the keys, as you see, but she is a wide-idead thinker. If it would not detain you, sir, against previous inclination to the ball-room, I should like to read you some of her poetry."

Glances too oppressed by awe to contain envy were cast upon me by my former companions from afar; even the man who had been in California was retreating in baffled dismay.

"This first," said Captain Judah, drawing a roll from his pocket, "though brief, has been called by many wide-idead thinkers a 'rounded globe of pathos:' men, strong men, have wept over it. It has had a yard built around it; in other words, it has been framed, and hung in many a bereaved household; let me read:

"'Farewell, my husband dear, farewell! Adieu! farewell to you. And you, my children dear, adieu! Farewell! farewell to thee! Adieu! farewell! adieu!'

"Were you looking for your handkerchief, sir?"

"Yes," said I, accidentally swallowing whole a nervine lozenge which Captain Leezur had given me.

"This," said Captain Judah, with an expressive smile, as he opened another roll, "if you will excuse the egotism, refers to an experience of my own. I was once, when master of a whaler, nearly killed in a conflict with a whale; in fact, I am accustomed to speak of it paradoxically--or shall I say hyperbolically--as 'The time when I was killed!' My account of it made a great impression upon Angie; but I will read:

"'Upon the deep and foaming brine, My Judah's blood was spilled. The anguished tears gush from my eyes. O Judah, wast thou killed?

"'Had I beheld that awful scene, I should have turned me pale, My eyes were mercifully hence, When Judah killed the whale.'

"It was I, so to speak, that was killed," said Captain Judah, with his peculiar smile; "the whale escaped. But for the sake of symphony, Angie has used that poetic license, familiar, as you know, to wide-idead thinkers. Or let me read you this----"

Dimmer and dimmer grew the faces of my former jovial company; but I had one friend, stout, even for this emergency.

I heard a voice coming--

Judah! Judah! Judah! drop 'er, I say, an' come along!" Captain Pharo winked.

"On some other occasion, sir," said Captain Judah, returning the roll to his pocket with cheerful haste, "I shall be happy."

Almost before I was aware that I was liberated, the shifty spectre, whose basilisk eye had not released me, stood at my side.

"You oughter have seen," he began, "the time 't I was killed in Californy----"

Major! major! major! drop 'er, I say, an' come along, by clam!"

There was naught to do, in Captain Pharo's exalted frame of mind, but to follow the commanding flower; but when that had become once more congenially distracted I returned to the ball-room to observe there.

The dancers were at rest, and Angie Fay too, the stewards serving them with refreshments; but Fluke and Gurdon were playing softly together on their violins, Fluke with waved hair on his forehead, Gurdon with still brow. Vesty had taken up her sleeping child and was holding him. The Basins loved sad music, low, mournful lullabys on the wind; they listened.

I listened so deeply, so strangely, it was like the awaking from a dream when I heard Notely and his guests inviting the dancers again to the floor.

"Good-night, major," Vesty whispered kindly, coming to me. She had her shawl wrapped over herself and her infant, and was departing quietly with her father-in-law, Captain Rafe.

"I--I didn't get one eye-beam from her the whole evenin'--no, by Jove! Note," said "Sid," watching that gently retreating figure; "not one! And she just now leaned over and showered a whole peck of 'em on that poor little----"

"Hush!" said Notely.

I witnessed with some sadness how Captain Pharo and Captain Judah were walking the room, arm-in-arm, Captain Judah reading from some of Angie Fay's most affecting strains, and Captain Pharo willingly melted to tears thereat.

"Read that ag'in, Judah," I heard Captain Pharo snivel, as they were passing me.

Then I heard the melodramatic snuffle of that "Adieu! farewell! adieu!"

Still farther down the room sobs were echoed back to me from Captain Pharo's bursting heart.

So that I was gratified, at the next round, to hear Captain Pharo declare that he felt the necessity of going home at once to have a copy of the verses made and "a ya-ard built around 'em, Judah."

Most of the Basins had gone; there were still some of the prettiest girls upon the floor, not with proper Basin escort, but with Notely's broadcloth guests, who were whispering sweet words of adulation to tingling, unaccustomed ears.

"Come!" Gurdon whispered to Fluke; "we should give up playing at this hour, and take those girls home."

Fluke shook his head. "Go home, you," he said: "one fiddle is enough! If we want a merry time, don't bother."

Gurdon stayed patiently, but with a brow waxing determined. The flattered girls, the broadcloth guests cast unwelcome glances at him.

"Go home, Gurd!" said Fluke, at last. "You spoil it all with a face like that. Go on, and don't mind us, or you and I shall quarrel."

"Not till those girls are ready to be taken home," said Gurdon.

Fluke threw down his fiddle with an oath. "I said that you and I should quarrel."

"I would not strike my twin-brother for all the false men and foolish girls in Christendom!" said Gurdon, standing before Fluke's threat, with folded arms, and such a look at him that Fluke came to himself, wincing.

"We may as well go home," he said sulkily.

The young men of the world watched this scene with amusement not untempered with choler, while they proceeded elaborately to assist the pretty Basins, who were wrapping themselves in their thin shawls.

"I fancy we are not to be trusted to escort these young ladies home?" said "Sid," with an elegant sarcastic inclination toward Gurdon.

"No," said poor Gurdon stonily. For he had played for them with a gracious heart all the evening, and it was hard to be hated. But he marshalled his flock away without flinching.

XV

THE BROTHERS

"There 's got to be a new deal to me in this world pretty soon," said Wesley, "or I shall kick."

I found him among the clam flats, leaning his spent and hopeless being on his rake.

"What is it, Wesley?"

"Belle O'Neill got me to help her set a trap to ketch a mink and a fox; she said we should git two dollars apiece; and we caught--we caught Miss Pray's tom-cat!"

Wesley rubbed his grimy hand across his eyes.

"She scolded awful and told us to go down to the clam flats and not to come home till we'd got two bushels o' clams for the hens. Fast as I get a roller full and go over and emp'y 'em on the bank the crows come 'n' eat 'em up--look a' there!"

I saw.

"Wesley, your load does seem greater than you can bear." He wore trousers of a style prevalent among the Basins, of meal sacks; only his were not shaped at all--there was simply a sack for each leg, tied with gathering strings at the ankles. His jacket was as much too small for his stout little person as his trousers were voluminous; and Miss Pray, who was artistic by freaks, had made it with an impertinent little tail like a bird's tail.

Wesley was not only afflicted, he was ludicrous in the face of high heaven.

"There 's got to be a new deal," blubbered he, with his fist in his eyes, "or I shall kick."

"_Could_ you kick in those trousers, Wesley?" I said.

He regarded me curiously, then replied with evident faith: "I could, nights."

"Ah! I'm so lame that I couldn't even kick much, nights, Wesley."

His countenance changed from its self-pity; he removed the fist from his eyes. "I've always wondered," he said, "'t you didn't kick more."

"Where is Belle O'Neill?"

"I told 'er 't she'd got me to set the trap, 'nd she orter, 't least, keep the crows off'n the clams; but she went over to Lunette's and borrowed the book, 'n' she's settin' there in the graves, where Miss Pray can't see her, readin' it."

I sighed to think how early, among his other trials, Wesley was learning the frailties of the lovable sex.

"I will go up and keep the crows off of the clams for you, Wesley."

"I think," said Wesley innocently, his face expressing a kindlier gratitude than his words conveyed, "'t you could scare 'em off first-rate!"

While I reclined on the green bank, not far from the clams, a solemn and fearful reprehension to the crows, I heard Belle O'Neill's voice reading to herself aloud among the graves. The Basins possessed but one secular volume, which they were accustomed to lend from house to house, and which was designated without confusion as "the book."

Belle O'Neill, peeping out from the graves, saw me, and came forward, blushing timidly. Wesley rose from the clam flats and hissed at her for her treachery, but she was very fair, and I received her kindly.

"Major Henry," said she, "will you show me what this means, please?"

She sat down close to me--for nobody minded me--and put her finger on the place.

Now "the book," though jointly purchased by the Basins from a travelling salesman, as a highly illuminated volume, promising much of a lively nature, had turned out to be to an altogether unexpected degree serious and didactic.

I followed Belle O'Neill's finger.

"Impressive Lesson. Perishableness!"

"What does it mean?" said the girl, with pale, inquiring lips.

Now as I loved the courtly valor of my race, I laughed.

"You do not understand those long words, Belle. It means, in those peculiar words, something about a Jack-o'-lantern."

"Oh," said Belle, gazing at it with sudden refreshment, "I guess it 's the only funny one in the book! They're usually so solemn."

We turned to the next page:

"Important Lesson. Discontent.

The Bachelor's Button that wanted to be a sunflower: the scow that wanted to be a schooner."

"Why," said Belle, with her finger on the cut of the angry and resentful bachelor's button that was throwing down its petals because it could not be a sunflower--"why did it want to be a sunflower?"

"I can't imagine," I said.

"Wouldn't you just as soon be a bachelor's button as a sunflower?"

"Well, I don't know," I murmured; but while I affected still to be pondering this subject doubtfully, Wesley came up from the clam flats.

He pointed to the cut on the opposite page:

"Warning Lesson. Slothfulness."

A plump and evidently highly contented maiden was here represented as lolling on a sofa.

"'T means _lazy_. She looks jest like Belle O'Neill, don't she?" said Wesley, grinning maliciously.

"Who"--flamed up Belle O'Neill--"put straws into the cow's teats, an' let the milk run, while he laid out on the grass an' slep', and Miss Pray found it out and flailed him with the broomstick?"

Wesley's grin froze on his features; he returned wearily to his rake.

"Comforting Lesson. A saint walking among the saved, on Revival Terrace."

But the saint, though tall and bearded, wore a ball dress such as the unchastened belles of society sport upon earth, a profuse skirt, with flashing train; and he was walking quite alone.

"Where are the 'saved'?" said Belle, with ghastly hope.

"They are just around the corner," said I cheerfully; "where that suggestion of clouds is--see!"

"N-no, but I guess they are. Ain't he the lookin'est thing you ever saw?"

"Quite the lookin'est!"

Belle giggled. I bore her out in it sympathetically.

Wesley, who observed how we were at least keeping the crows off of the clams, smiled upon us with feeble indulgence.

But as we read on, Belle did come to a lesson of such useful terror that she decided to take her rake and assist Wesley among the flats.

I approved her, and lay back, smiling, in the I heard Wesley's little old voice pipe up, considerately: "You'll scare 'em jest as well if you do go to sleep, major."

I kept on smiling. The sun seemed a lake of glory and I a boatman, fair and free, sailing vast distances upon it with just one stroke of my wand-oar--and here I began to scare the crows unconsciously.

The air of the Basin anon exhilarated one, anon soothed one into wondrous, deep, peace-drunken slumber.

When I awoke Vesty stood over me, calling me.

There was a purple, dark sky--now but little after mid-day--glowing with red at the edges like a sunset; the wind was blowing strong. It was dark, yet all was distinct about me. I sprang to my feet with a sort of solemn exultation and bared my head.

"Wake, major, wake!" Vesty cried to me. She drew me and pointed out to sea. "Notely's boat--it was trying to make home--it is on the reefs."

I saw it then by a flash of that unearthly light, the wind descending like the last of days. I hastened with Vesty to the low beach, where the people were moving strangely, looking out on the sea with its swift-crested breakers.

From the yacht, beating helpless on the ledges, Notely and the few who had sailed with him that morning were putting out the life-boat; but Captain Rafe kept running his weather-stained hand down his white face, his head shaking.

"Bare chance t' save half of 'em in the gale--they'll swamp her; nay, nay, they'll never get her home with that freight; and it's no sea--it 's a herricane, above and below. I see the sky in broad day like that but once before, and then----"

His voice was hushed, the boat was off, was lost; then once again we saw her; we felt the gale rushing; when we could see again, there were a few struggling in the waves, a few climbing back upon the sinking masts of the vessel, with wild signals.

The little Basin boats were old and frail; only Gurdon had lately been building a new fishing-boat. While we were looking off he had been hauling it down the steep bank by the cottage.

Now when we saw him Vesty ran to him and put the child in his arms and clung to him. I saw a great light come over his face.

"Gurd," said his father sternly, the old stained hand still stroking his white face, "ye have strength and skill above the most--but look at yon! Put up your boat, lad; it's no use. Moreover, there are five men yonder on the masts--your boat, tested in an ordinar' sea, holds but five alone!"

"Will ye go out jest to give them another chance to wrack themselves, and ye put yerself by to drown?" said another, with a trembling, half-ferocious laugh. "Look to yer wife and child. Don't be a fool!"

"There 's not one o' ye," cried Gurdon, "but if ye had a boat fit 'u'd do all ye could, an' men sinkin' and a-wavin' ye like that--let me off! There 's no other way----"

His voice broke. He looked at his wife and child, a look the woman understood for all eternity.

Vesty stood like marble; her shawl had escaped from her own throat, but was warm about the child that Gurdon had placed back on her breast.

As we waited, watching, transfixed, Fluke came running breathless from the woods where he had been as guide with the party of Notely's pleasure-seekers who had stayed behind that morning.

Captain Rafe ran to him, with the hand still stroking his pallid face: "That was Gurdon out there, making so near the sinking boat--he would go--only five----"

But Fluke heard never a word. He saw; his face flushed with a kind of mad joy; he tossed his hair back, and leaping into the waves, swam to his own frail little fishing-boat that was tossing at anchor.

His voice leaped back to us above the tumult of the wind: "Gurd and me'll come home together!"

There was a lull in the gale; the five were put off from the sinking craft in Gurdon's boat.

And the men were standing with ropes on the shore; but I only saw, as the tempest moaned, to swell again, one figure on a bending mast, between sea and sky, and one in a frail shell toiling toward him.

The tempest fell and smote. Then did nothing seem to me fated underneath those awful heavens, but grand and free; freest, mightiest of all that figure imprisoned between storm and cloud, overwhelmed, buried----triumphant, imperishable! Then did the dead that I had known come forth and walk upon the waves before me: and I beheld that they were not dead, but glorious and strong--that, rather, I was dead.

Then all seemed black about me. I would have clutched at somewhat, but I felt a cold hand grasp mine in appealing agony. They brought in with ropes through the breakers the five men who had neared the shore in the young sailor's new fishing-boat.

But the "Twin Brothers," the sublime figure on the mast, the toiling figure in the boat, had "gone home together!"

XVI

THE POPLAR LEAVES TREMBLE

It was Vesty's hand that had wrung mine. Captain Rafe, after he lost his sons, hardly spoke without drawing his own trembling hand along his piteous face.

"Notely fell from the mast and was stunted; they put him in the boat: else he wouldn't 'a' come and left my Gurd, I b'lieve." Tears rolled down his cheeks.

Vesty spoke to me so softly, as if her head were turned, or she were wandering in a dream. "When Gurdon had anything that anybody needed, and they asked him for it, he always gave it them. So they asked him for his life--and he gave that!"

Notely, on recovering consciousness, had been carried to his house at the Neck: by the next morning they had his mother with him; he was in a fever.

Would Vesty remember now the promise she had asked of Mrs. Garrison?

At all events, the sick man babbled deliriously of past days, had fallen from the rock once more, and would have Vesty to nurse him: "where," asking ever, "is Vesty?"

Mrs. Garrison herself went to her, pleading his pain and danger. Vesty came.

"Hello! we're saved!--the Vesty!" cried Notely, whose fever had been plunging him in cold sea-waves, his voice a feeble echo of its old gay tone, as he put up his hand to her.

So ashy and sunken was his face, Vesty took him on her arm as she would her child; he fell asleep.

"Vesty stops the pain--no one lifts me like Vesty--sing, Vesty!" from pathetic lips and wandering blue eyes that would die if one recalled them to their sorrow.

"Only stay," said Mrs. Garrison. "His life hangs upon it. Surely you are not afraid to have your child with me?"

Her heart was full of tenderness for the girl. "I would die rather than anything should happen to your child, Vesty," she cried, with a sincere impulse.

Vesty lifted those Basin eyes.

"Oh, he is not old enough yet to understand my worldliness," said Mrs. Garrison, with bitter lips.

For, from entrusting the child at first to her servants, while Vesty was in the sick-room, Mrs. Garrison had grown to have a jealous care for him herself. He had taken an occasion, and he had conquered her.

When she pleased him he dimpled and gave her, on appeal, an ostentatious kiss, composed wholly of noise and vanity. When she first displeased him he had tried conclusions with her by unhesitatingly administering a slap on the face.

Mrs. Garrison, the select and haughty, tingling from this direct Basin blow, watched the flame die out of the baby's eyes, in astonishment, not in anger. The blow felt good to her. Vesty treated her, though unconsciously, from such a height.

"My darling," she said sorrowfully, lifting the child in her arms, "would you hurt me, when I love you so?"

A bit of sugar sealed the reconciliation: while he devoured it little Gurdon leaned his head in tender remorse upon Mrs. Garrison's neck. She had handsome eyes--for him, full only of love and longing--and he saw strange tears in them. He never treated her again to corporeal punishment; while she, on her part, indulged him fully.

The attachment was so marked between them that he would, when he was well and had dined, very cheerfully leave Vesty for her society, to Vesty's secret chagrin and Mrs. Garrison's beating heart of joy.

"Do you mean to say that you will take the child back again--back to that squalid home--yes, for such it is, Vesty--that you will deprive him of all that might be, and give him up to a fisherman's wretched life and dreary fate?"