"It improves you--some," he said, but his look only too plainly
indicated that there was still much to be desired.
We were sitting thus on the doorstep, Uncle Benny with the baby, and I
peeling the potatoes, with his blue ribbon tied around my neck, when I
heard a half-familiar little scream and laugh, and, looking up, beheld
a fashionable company.
"We hailed Gurdon, off Reef Island, and he said we might come and see
the son and heir--hurrah!"
Notely spoke in his gay voice, but the look he gave Vesty's
child--Vesty's sweet self in that form--leaped with a passionate pain.
There was a small, brilliant-looking woman beside him, with
eye-glasses. "O you divine infant!" she exclaimed, regarding the
child. "Where is the Madonna?"
Now, I was purposely gathering up the potato peelings very slowly from
the doorway, so that the "Madonna" might have time to take down a
certain blue sack from the bedpost at hand, and put it on, and give
those little finger-touches to the hair that women covet; so I stumbled
over the peelings and got mixed up with them, until even Uncle Benny
felt called upon to apologize for me.
"He looks some better," he said dubiously, touching his neck: "but," he
continued, in a very soft and confidential tone, "Nature has not done
so much for him as she has for some, you know."
All the party had the air of having just had a very merry luncheon on
board the yacht.
By the side of Notely's bride was one of the handsomest young athletes,
almost as handsome as Fluke and Gurdon Rafe.
"What-th--what-th the admithion?" he whispered to Grace, plunging his
hand in among the coin in his pockets; "ith--ith there any more of the
thame kind inthide?"
"Hush!" said she quickly, for she knew that I had heard. She lifted a
hand impulsively toward his mouth: he caught her hand and looked as
though he would have held it; she drew it away, blushing sweetly, and
sighed, as she had sighed at Notely.
Vesty saw that, as they entered; saw Notely enter with his easy,
unobservant swagger, lest the unexpected visit of this fashionable
company should embarrass her. He walked across the room, humming an
air, to his old violin.
He touched a strain or two. "Do you remember, Vesty," he said airily,
drawing nearer, "this?--and this? You have such a beautiful little
boy, Vesty! I am so glad!--so glad! And this?--do you remember?" He
played as though he could play away the pallor from that tender face
upon the pillows; the pitiful, fine little blue sack added to it. I
had left the dust-pan loaded with its spoils, the ragged handle, as I
now perceived, not quite hidden behind the door: it caught on to the
skirts of the brilliant lady with the eye-glasses, and went trailing
loudly after her along the floor. As I stooped down to detach it,
sheltered behind those fine draperies, I gave Vesty such a side glance
that a smile and color came over her face in spite of herself.
"Such power of attraction!" said Notely, turning to the lady his
laughing eyes, with that unconscious pathos which a lovely woman never
failed to discover in them; "even the dust-pans"--he swept the strings
of the violin--"even the dust-pans become attached to you."
"On the contrary," said she, giving him a sharp glance which he
relished from her very bright though near-sighted eyes; "it is not
often that I have become attached to anything so useful."
He laughed with mettlesome good-nature.
The bride, with her attendant brave, had gone up to Uncle Benny and the
baby.
"Let me take him," she said, holding up her beautiful arms.
Uncle Benny smiled at her, half remembering her--it was an old joke,
his becoming engaged to every pretty woman he met--but shook his head.
"It 's a particular trust," he said, in his very soft, sweet voice;
"from Jesus Christ and mother. What if somebody should drop him, or
hurt him? I have to be very careful, for it 's a trust.
"'There 's a tree I see in Paradise--'"
he suddenly broke into the song again in a loud and perfectly
unembarrassed tone:
"'Sail away to Galilee.
It 's the beautiful, waiting Tree of Life--
Sail away to Galilee.
Sail away to Galilee.'"
* * * * * *
"Good gwaciouth!" said the young man, fumbling the coin in his pockets
and listening in a dazed state of appreciation at the unexpected
resources of this menagerie.
"Doctor!" cried Notely--and that address delighted Uncle Benny--"Dr.
Spearmint, let me make you acquainted with Mrs. Forrester"--some
wailing strains from the violin--"she could get a divorce from her
present consort, I suppose--ahem!--if there were encouragement enough
from some one sufficiently endowed by nature."
"It is better to be simple than to be wicked," instantly retorted the
bright little woman, regarding Uncle Benny humorously and not without
compassion.
But Uncle Benny was not to be disturbed again; he had his cue.
"Oh, thank you!" he murmured; "but I couldn't think of it, anyway.
I've got so many trusts. There 's Vesty's baby, and there 's the
little children I take to school every day and go to fetch them. I'm
very careful, because they're trusts, you see;" and he marched on
gladly with the baby, singing.
"You ought to be ashamed, all of you!" said Mrs. Forrester; and sat
down by Vesty with friendly advice and prattle about her own babies.
Notely dreamed away on his violin: that made it easy for the rest. His
bride and the handsome young man flirted with ardor, yet quite
transparently: there was a smile wholly devoid of bitterness on
Notely's lips.
"Grace!" cried the sharp little woman at last; "we've some superfluous
shawls on board the yacht that would make such charming rugs for Mrs.
Rafe's baby. If Mrs. Rafe could send one of her servants down to the
shore to call a man from the boat."
"I'd thend--thend the one with the body," said the young man, still
afflicted with wonder at Uncle Benny and myself, and indicating Uncle
Benny the more hopefully.
"I prefer the one with the mind," said Mrs. Forrester gravely, snapping
a glance at him that was not without meaning. "Why, when you have been
drinking too much wine, Cousin Jack, can you not go and sit down in a
corner and amuse yourself innocently by yourself as Mr. Garrison does?"
At that Notely looked up and shot at her a long, gay challenge without
words: his eyes in themselves seemed to fascinate her, as they did most
people; she brightened with a caressing, artistic sense of pleasure in
them.
"Well, I like that!" said her cousin, having by this time framed a
rejoinder to her question. "Grace and I haven't thpooned anything like
you and Note did, thailing down, only you're so deuced thly about it!"
"You are disgusting," said she, too lofty and serene to be annoyed.
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.