As we alighted at the school-house, we listened through the open panel
with comfort to the final but vociferous refrain of "He will carry you
through," and entered in time to take our seats for the class.
Elder Skates stood with a lesson paper in his hand, from which he asked
questions with painful literalness and adherence to the text.
The audience, having no lesson paper or previous preparation of the
sort, and not daring to enter into these themes with that originality
of thought and expression displayed in their former conversation,
answered only now and then, with the pale air of hitting at a broad
guess.
"Is sin the cause of sorrow?" said Elder Skates.
No reply.
"Is sin the cause of sorrow?" he repeated faithfully.
At this point, one of a row of small boys on the back seat, no more
capable of appreciating this critical period of the Sunday-school than
the broad-faced sculpin fish which he resembled, took an alder-leaf
from his pocket and, lifting it to his mouth, popped it, with an
explosion so successful and loud that it startled even himself.
His guardian (aunt), who sat directly in front of him, though deaf,
heard some echo of this note; and seeing the sudden glances directed
their way, she turned and, observing the look of frozen horror and
surprise upon his features, said severely, "You stop that sithing"
(sighing).
Delighted at this full and unexpected escape from guilt and its
consequences, the sculpin embraced his fellow-sculpins with such
ecstasy that he fell off from his seat, upon the floor.
His aunt, turning again, and having no doubt as to his position this
time, lifted him and restored him to his place with a determination so
pronounced that the act in itself was clearly audible.
"You set your spanker-beam down there now, and keep still!" she said.
Elber Skates took advantage of this providential disturbance to slide
on to the next question:
"How can we escape trouble?"
No reply.
"How can we escape trouble?" he meekly and patiently repeated.
"Good Lord, Skates!" said Captain Pharo, and put his hand in his pocket
for his pipe, but bethought himself, and withdrew it, with a deep sigh.
Elder Skates had looked at him with hope, but now again mechanically
reiterated:
"How--can--we--escape--trouble?"
"We can't! we can't no way in this world!" said Captain Pharo. "Where
in h--ll did you scrape up them questions, Skates? Escape trouble? Be
you a married man, Skates? I'd always reckoned ye was! Poo! poo!
Hohum! Wal--wal--never mind--
[Illustration: Music fragment: 'Or the morn-ing flow'r. The blight--'"]
He bethought himself again of his surroundings, spat far out of the
window as a melancholy resource, and was silent.
Elder Skates, alarmed and staggered, looked softly down his list of
questions for something vaguely impersonal, widely abstract, and now
lit upon it with a smile.
"What is the meaning of 'Alphy and Omegy'?" he said--and waited, weary
but safe.
But at the second repetition of this inscrutable conundrum, a lank and
tall girl of some fifteen summers, arose and said, not without
something of the sublime air becoming a solitary intelligence: "It's
the great and only Pot-entate."
Elder Skates showed no sign of having been hit to death, but gazed
vaguely at each one of his audience in turn, and then turned with dazed
approval to the girl.
"Very good. Very good indeed," said he. "How true that is! Let us
try and act upon it during the week, according to our lights.
Providence--nor nothin' else--preventin', we will have our
Sunday-school here as usual next Sunday, and I hope we shall all try
and keep up religion. Is there anybody willing to have the 'five-cent
supper' this week, in order to raise funds for a united burying-ground?
We have been long at work on this good cause, but, I'm sorry to say,
interest seems to be flaggin'. Is there anybody willin' to have the
five-cent supper this week?"
"I can, I suppose," said the woman who had been willing to sing without
tune. "But I can't give beans no longer. I can give beet greens and
duck."
"I don't think it was any wonder we was gettin' discouraged," said
another now resuscitated voice. "Zely had the last one, and Fluke for
devilment gets a lot of the Artichokes over early ter help the cause.
Wal, you might know there wa'n't no beans left for the Capers and
Basins, and Zely was dreadful mortified, for there was several Crooked
Rivers."
"Cap'n Nason Teel says," continued that individual's wife, "that the
treasury 's fell behind; he says there ain't nothin' made in five-cent
suppers, Artichokes or no Artichokes--in beans and corn-beef; he says
we've got to give somethin' that don't cost nothin'. Beet greens and
duck don't cost nothin', and if that 's agreeable, I'm willin'."
"All the same, beet greens and duck is very good eatin', I think,"
proposed Elder Skates, and receiving no dissenting voice, continued:
"Providence--nor nothin' else--preventin', there will be a five-cent
supper at Cap'n Nason Teel's, on Wednesday evenin'. Beet greens and
duck. I will now close the Sunday-school, trusting we shall do all we
can during the week to help the cause of the burying-ground and of
religion. As soon as Brother Birds'll arrives, we can begin social
meetin'."
"It 's natch'all he should be late; somebody said 't he was havin'
pickled shad for dinner."
"Here he comes now, beatin' to wind'ard," said Captain Pharo from the
window. "He'll make it! The wind 's pilin' in through this 'ere
school-house on a clean sea-rake. I move 't we tack over to south'ard
of her."
This nautical advice was being followed with some confusion; I did not
see Vesty when she came in, but when the majority of us had tacked to
south'ard, I, electing still to remain at the nor'east, saw her, not
far in front of me, and knew it was she.
The wind was blowing the little scolding locks of dusky brown hair in
her neck; her shoulders were broad to set against either wind or
trouble; she was still and seemed to make stillness, and yet her breast
was heaving under hard self-control, her cheeks were burning, her eyes
downcast.
I looked. Nestled among those safe to the south'ard was a young man
with very wide and beautiful blue eyes, that spoke for him without
other utterance whatever he would. Of medium height and build, yet one
only thought, somehow, how strong he was; clad meanly as the rest, even
to the rubber storm-bonnet held in his tanned black hand, it was yet
plain enough that he was rich, powerful, and at ease.
His wide eyes were on Vesty, and shot appealing mirth at her.
She never once glanced at him, her full young breast heaving.
"Can't some of the brothers fix this scuttle over my head?" said Elder
Birds'll nervously, addressing the group of true and tried seamen,
anchored cosily to south'ard.
One, Elder Cossey, arose, a Tartar, not much beloved, but prominent in
these matters. In his endeavors he mounted the desk and disappeared,
wrestling with the scuttle, all except his lower limbs and expansive
boots.
"My Lord!" muttered one who had been long groaning under a Cossey
mortgage; "ef I could only h'ist the rest of ye up there, and shet ye
up!"
"I sh'd like to give him jest one jab with my hatpin," added a sister
sufferer, under her breath.
"The scuttle is now closed," said Elder Birds'll gravely, as Elder
Cossey descended, "and the social meetin' is now open."
Here the blow of silence again fell deeply.
The wide blue eyes gave Vesty a look, like the flying ripple on a deep
lake.
She did not turn, but that ripple seemed to light upon her own sweet
lips; they quivered with the temptation to laugh, the little scolding
locks caressed her burning ears and tickled her neck, but she sat very
still. I fancied there were tears of distress, almost, in her eyes. I
wanted her to lift her eyes just once, that I might see what they were
like.
"Hohum!" began Elder Cossey, with wholly devout intentions--"we thank
Thee that another week has been wheeled along through the sand, about a
foot deep between here and the woods, and over them rotten spiles on
the way to the Point, and them four or five jaggedest boulders at the
fork o' the woods--I wish there needn't be quite so much zigzagging and
shuffling in their seats by them 't have come in barefoot afore the
Throne o' Grace," said Elder Cossey, suddenly opening his eyes, and
indicating the row of sculpins with distinct disfavor.
"Yes," he continued, "we've been a-straddlin' along through
troublements and trialments and afflickaments, hanging out our phiols
down by the cold streams o' Babylon, and not gittin' nothin' in 'em,
hohum!"
Vibrating thus mysteriously, and free and unconfined, between
exhortation and prayer, Elder Cossey finally merged into a recital of
his own weakness and vileness as a miserable sinner.
And here a strange thing happened. A brother who had been noticing the
winks and smiles cast broadly about, and thinking in all human justice
that Elder Cossey was getting more than his share, got up and declared
with emotion, that he'd "heered some say how folks was all'as talkin'
about their sins for effex, and didn't mean nothin' by it, but I can
say this much, thar ain't no talkin' for effex about Brother Cossey; he
has been, and is, every bit jest as honest mean as what he 's been
a-tellin' on!"
Elder Skates arose, trembling. "Vesty," said he, with unnatural
quickness of tone; "will you start 'Rifted Rock'?"
The blue, handsome eyes were on her mercilessly--she was suffocating
besides with a wild desire to laugh, her breath coming short and quick.
She gave one agonized look at Brother Skates, and then, lifted her eyes
to the window.
The clouds were sad and grand; there was a bird flying to them.
She fixed her eyes there, and her voice flowed out of her:
"'Softly through the storm of life,
Clear above the whirlwind's cry,
O'er the waves of sorrow, steals
The voice of Jesus, "It is I."'"
The music in her throat had trembled at first like the bird's flight,
winging as it soared, but now all that was over; her uplifted face was
holy, grave:
"'In the Rifted Rock I'm resting.'"
* * * * * *
Elder Cossey forgot his wrath in mysterious deep movings of
compunction. Fluke, who had entered, was soft, reverent, his fingers
twitching for his violin. Even so, I thought, as I listened, it may be
will sound to us some voice from the other shore, when we put out on
the dark river.
"Vesty," said a mite of a girl, coming up to her after meeting, "Evelin
wants to know if you can set up with Clarindy to-night. She 's been
took again."
"Yes," said Vesty, the still look on her face, "I'll come."
"Vesty," said Elder Skates, "when can you haul over the organ and swipe
her out? She 's full o' chalk."
"I'll try and do it to-morrow." Vesty looked at Elder Skates and
smiled, showing her wholesome white teeth.
"Vesty," said Mrs. Nason Teel; "I want ye to set right down here, now
I've got ye, and give me that resute for Mounting Dew pudding."
The blue eyes at the door gave Vesty an imperative, quick glance.
But she sat down by Mrs. Nason Teel; she sat there purposely until all
the people were dispersed and the winding lanes were still outside.
Then she went her own way alone, something like tears veiled under
those long, quiet lashes.
She saw first a muscular hand on the fence and dared not look up, until
Notely Garrison had vaulted over at a bound and stood before her, his
glad eyes flashing, his storm hat in his hand.
Then her look was wild reproach.
"Vesty!" he cried. "Is this the way, after all we have been to one
another? Have you forgotten how we were like sister and brother, you
and I? how Doctor Spearmint led us to school together?" he laughed
eagerly. "How"----
"I haven't forgotten, Note. But it can't be the same again, as man and
woman, with what you are, and what I am."
"Better! O Vesty!"--he stood quite on a level with her now; she was
glad of that. She was a tall girl, taller than he when they parted.
"O Vesty!" he drank in her beauty with an awe that uplifted her in his
frank, bright gaze--"God was happy when He made you!"
But the girl's eyes only searched his with a Basin gravity, for faith.
A fatal step, searching in Notely's eyes! A beautiful pallor crept
over her face, flushing into joy. She ran her hand through his rough,
light hair in the old way.
"It has not changed you, being at the schools so long, as I thought it
would," she said wistfully, stroking his hair with mature gentleness,
though he was older than she. "Why, Note; you look just as brown, and
hearty, and masterful as ever!"
"Oh, but it wasn't book-schools I went to, you know. It was rowing and
foot-ball and taking six bars on the running leap, and swinging from
the feet with the head downward, and all that. I can do it all."
He looked away from her with mischief in his eyes, and hummed a line
through his fine Greek nose, as Captain Pharo might.
"I don't doubt it, but you were high in the college too--for Lunette
saw it in a paper: so high it was spoken of!"
"I just asked them to do that, Vesty. People can't refuse me, you
know. I get whatever I ask for."
He turned to her with a sort of childish pathos on his strong, handsome
face.
She bit her lip for joy and pride in him, even his strange, gay ways.
"Come, Vesta!" he said, with an air of natural and graceful
proprietorship; "a stolen meeting is nonsense between you and me. I
shall see you home."