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?"
"Will you make a better man of him in the world than his father was?"
said Vesty simply.
"You know that I worship Gurdon Rafe's memory," cried Mrs. Garrison,
with adroit heat. "What do you think would please him best for his
wife and child--misery and cold with an old man who could have a better
home among his own kin, had he not to make the effort to support
you--or happiness and warmth and love, and a great sphere of
usefulness, happiness, and education for his child?"
"You see," said Vesty, on the plain Basin path, "in trying to get those
things we might miss the only--the greatest--thing, that Gurdon had.
I'd rather my boy should learn to have that, and miss all the others."
"O my dear! you shall teach your child, you shall be always with him.
I have some things to remember and regret, Vesty. I promise you
solemnly--and I do not break my word--I will not interfere. You shall
teach and guide your child as you will."
Notely was awake and calling.
"Go to him," said Mrs. Garrison, excitement in her eyes; "he will
explain to you, my child." There was a tenderness, a hope, a
voluptuousness of sweet earthly things in her manner toward the poor
girl now, which all her life Vesty had missed.
Heart and flesh were weary, and Notely, who had been the light of her
life once, looked up at her with that weight of sorrow, so much darker
and heavier than her own; so much heavier because it was dark.
"Help me to bear it!" he said.
She understood all; she laid her head beside him, sobbing.
"Vesty, you know the doctors say that I shall live; but--now that I am
sane again, I do not know why I should wish to live."
She put her hand on his. Alas! in spite of reckless wandering and
tragedy, and forsaken faith and duty, the touch only thrilled him with
his own dreams as of old.
"Listen, Vesty!--just as you used to be my little woman and reason with
me. Ugh! how weak I am! I'm not worth saving. It is of little
consequence, truly; but, such as it is, it all lies with you. Some
time, Vesty--I am speaking of what must be some time, dearest; and
remember, it is often done in the world, among those who are highest
and richest and socially recognized--well, it is a familiar thing: as
soon as it can be well arranged--and that soon, now--my wife and I
shall be divorced. We have both wished it, we are unhappy together, it
is a wrong for us to live together. She has been untrue enough to me,
as I to her, but let that pass; such things are not for your ears to
hear, only you need have no qualms. Grace will be more congenially
wedded within two months after we are parted.
"And then--Vesty? Well, will you not speak to me? Is it to be life
and honor, with your love at last, or despair and death? You were
promised to me once. In spite of all, you cannot hold yourself your
own; you are mine; the wife God meant for me. O Vesty! let us blot out
the confused past with all its mistakes! It is killing me--will kill
me body and soul if you leave me now. Let me find my lost home at
last: let me rest a little while before I die!"
His weak and gasping breath warned her; she stilled his hands, the low
lids hiding the anguish in her eyes.
So there was a way out of it all, easy, luxurious, convenient for the
passions! And there was a straight Basin way, a high promise before
God and man, that, to the Basin sense, there was no taking back: Vesty
could not see upon any other road; she shuddered.
But Notely's wasted, broken life clinging to her!
"That was never done among the Basins, Notely. When we are married we
promise, and we hold to it till death. It would never seem to me that
I was your wife, but wicked and false to you and her--always that. I
would rather die!"
"My Vesty, the Basin is a little, little part of the world, and
ignorant of life. I tell you what is right. You used to have faith in
me--so much that, if you would, you might still believe in me and my
ceaseless love for you. Do you think that I will ever leave you here?
My mother wants you and the child: we will be happy together at last,
with such quiet or such pleasures as you will. My quarries are turning
out wealth for me--it is for you and Gurdon's child. Think of Gurdon's
little boy!"
As he spoke, Vesty seemed to see again a pale face with a great light
upon it, turning without question to its stern duty.
"Notely, Gurdon gave me up, and the baby that he worshipped; though I
clung to him, he put us by, because, though it was hard, it was
right--it was the only way. I think it is often so between those two,
the right and what we want. I think that love, somehow, in this world
seems to be putting by--putting by what we want."
Vesty struggled again in her dim way.
"Why need it be?" cried Notely sharply. He raised himself on the
pillows as if stung; a deep crimson rushed to his cheeks.
"It is," said Vesty sadly, quietly--"it is. What we want--putting by.
Do you think I did not care for you?"
His haggard face turned to her.
"Will not always care for you? But you will never be a great man till
you can put by what you want, when they stand against each other, for
what is right, though it be hard. Then one would not only admire and
love you; they would trust you to death's door, though all the way was
hard."
Notely had no answer for the tongue-loosed Basin. Besides, her words
had comforted him, her tears fell on him.
"I do not think," she said, with a look and voice of such tenderness,
as though it were her farewell, "that it was all to us, that I should
marry you, or you should marry me--until we could live brave and true,
though we lost one another, and follow the only way we saw, though it
was hard. I do not believe we should have been happy--without
that--after a little while.
"I could not love you if you left your wife and married me. I should
never trust you. I would rather we should both die. Go back to her
and win her with your own love and kindness, and be true to her, and I
shall never lose my love for you."
"Do you know what love is?" said Notely, with clinched teeth, tears
springing from between the wasted fingers pressed against his eyes.
"Do you know what it is to suffer?"
She gave him no flaming retort. She put her head beside him.
The past came back to him, and her poor, burdened, self-sacrificing
life. Wild sobs shook his heart. "All lost! all lost!" he moaned.
"No, only not found yet," she said, looking at him through her tears;
"all waiting."
It was such a simple Basin path, knowing so few things, but unswerving.
"Not here, I know," she said, "for nothing is for long or without loss
and sorrow here. There is always somebody sick or hurt; and the poplar
trees, that the cross was made from, are always trembling and sighing:
but some time Christ will lay his hand upon them, and they will be
still and blessed again."