"If there 's any fun going on," frankly admits Mrs. Kobbe, "you'll
all'as find me up an' dressed!" Perhaps I sympathize more truly with
her kind-hearted spouse, who says with a deep sigh: "We mustn't be
tackiturn jest because the wind's off the snow-banks."
So I go to the flag-raising.
"The Crooked Rivers and Capers have had their flag up these three
weeks," said Lunette; "and I heard how the Artichokes had h'isted
theirn yesterday. When the Artichokes have got their flag up, seems as
though the Basins had better be thinkin' o' what time it is in the
mornin'!"
"What is the flag to be raised for?" I inquired, with unsuspecting
innocence.
There was an afflicted silence; still they loved me. Lunette alone
answered at last, turning to Tyson, not to me.
"I should think it 's enough to have a flag-raisin' without a-askin'
what it is for!" said she. "What does trees grow for? What does
anything in natur' act the way it does for?"
I, ever safe anchored behind Lunette's championship, looked out
securely at the derelict Tyson, to see if he could answer. He could
not, but was abashed. Still I so far appropriated the hint, wisely and
delicately delivered, that I made no further inquiries, only giving
myself unhesitatingly to the joy of preparation.
The flag was to be raised over the school-house, and instead of wending
our way dissonantly thither, as was our habit in attending the
meetings, we were to go in procession!
A curious awe attached to this idea, in which I fully shared, as, being
formed in line, I tried to limp martially behind the valiant Lunette.
"Halt, by clam!" said our general.
"What is it?" came in whispers along the line.
"Jakie Teel" (one of the sculpins) "'s got his trousers on hind side
afore!"
"Flory dressed him by candlelight this mornin', so 't she could get
time to make three loaves o' angel-cake for the flag-raisin'."
The victim of this mysterious adventure was led away by his mother for
reaccoutrement, while we as a regiment waited patiently for his return
to warlike rank and file.
"If these condummit ructions are over," said our general--for the wind
was blowing cold--"forwards ag'in, by clam!" and we marched upon the
schoolhouse; but we encountered so many difficulties, of wayward ropes,
in hoisting our ensign, that Captain Pharo declared, rubbing his
chilled hands:
"'T we'd omit the usual cheerin' 'tell we'd been in and thawed out--ef
they was any thaw to us--leastways baited."
Vesty was there with the rest, munching a slice of angel-cake--fit food
for her! I smiled kindly upon her, but did not forget that I was an
indifferent bean-pole.
"Major!" cried the Basin, toward the close of the repast, with its
mouth sweet and full--"Major, a speech! a speech!"
Now I had a heart given to the Basin, with a simple thought or two, and
I requisitioned the best of my forces for the "Occasion," conscious of
my morning glory there--oh, she of the skies! munching angel's food.
Whatever I had said or done, moreover, the Basin would have applauded;
yet such cheers as I heard now left no doubt upon my too-willing and
plastic sense of a phenomenal and hitherto unsuspected ability.
"Vesty," said Elder Skates, starting to his feet, "will you
start--start--start--anything?"
"We always _do_ sing
"'In the prison cells I set,
Thinking, mother dear, of you,'
to flag-raisin'," said the ever well-informed and officious Lunette.
"Somehow," said Captain Pharo, shrugging his shoulders, "thar 's too
much of a sea-rake blowin' acrost the back o' my neck t' sing 'Prison
Cells;' 'tain't clost enough for it here. What d'ye say to 'Hold the
Fort'?"
What they said was unanimous. Even Captain Leezur knew it, and the
sculpins, of terrible voice. It was sung with such complete personal
abandonment to strong oral gifts that, at the second verse, the
remaining quota of plastering upon the school-house roof became
loosened and fell with a crash upon the head of that very unfortunate
sculpin who under other blighting circumstances had been forced to
undergo temporary absence from our ranks in the morning.
He uttered a mature sea-oath, and was again marched violently from our
presence by his mother; but I was happy to see that he returned soon
afterward and renewed his portion of the song with a gusto which the
added quality of defiance now rendered deafening, while through all our
din sounded true the flute of Vesty's sweet voice.
"We mustn't forgit the occasion, I s'pose," said Captain Pharo, our
general, at length. "Poo! poo! hohum! I s'pose it's about time we was
thinkin' o' goin' out to cheer the flag. Forwards, by clam! Poo! poo!
hohum! Wal, wal--
[Illustration: Music fragment: "'My days are as the grass--'"]
"Sh!" said Mrs. Kobbe, deftly getting audience at his ear.
"Ladies an' gentlemen an' childern," said Captain Pharo, taking his
place beside the flag; "we've h'isted of 'er, an' here she blows"--he
put his hand in his pocket for his pipe, and drew from his vest a match.
Mrs. Kobbe coughed loudly, and even shook her head at him: he put them
back.
"We have h'isted on 'er," he continued, "an' here she blows!"
Mrs. Kobbe's cough of deeper warning and high-mounting blushes on his
account nerved him.
"We've h'isted of 'er," he shouted with desperate defiance, "and thar
she blows, don't she, by clam! on the full, the free, the glorious, an'
the ever-lastin' h'ist!"
A sturdy round of applause was not wanting, but on this point Mrs.
Kobbe was visibly sceptical: she received her lord with sniffs of
disdain.
"'The full, the free, the glorious, an' the ever-lastin' h'ist'!" said
she. "Where was you eddicated, Cap'n Pharo Kobbe?"
"It don't make but darn little difference whar ye've been eddicated,"
replied Captain Pharo, "when ye're tryin' to make a speech, an' one o'
them devil-fish boys goes around behind ye an' snaps a live lobster
onto the slack o' yer britches!"
Giggles from a school of sculpins safe hidden somewhere lent further
aggravation to the dilemma.
"Jakie Teel an' Pharie Kobbe, Junior, 'll come to judgment," cried Mrs.
Kobbe, in a loud voice, "'specially Pharie Kobbe as soon 's ever he
gits home," whereat giggling from that miscreant quarter ceased, and
she relieved her lord of his painful embarrassment.
But at this point a new and surprising development arose. The Basin
horses attached to some wholesale herring-boxes, extemporized as
sleighs, were driven to the scene. Captain Pharo, with heart-whole joy
at the sight, lit his pipe and declared, with now beaming countenance:
"It has been arranged, to crown this happy 'casion, for all our
unmarried Basins over sixteen year o' age, not forgettin' widders under
forty, to have a sleigh ride. Elder Skates'll reel off the names,
accordin' to which you can pile yerselves in accordin'ly, two 'n' two,
side by side, thus 'n' so, male an' female, created He them!"
Flushed with inspiration, Captain Pharo glanced triumphantly at his
wife, who, at this more than Pentateuchal illustration, refused to
sneer.
So absorbed was I in watching the gleeful embarkation, and so little
dreamed I of being considered in a case like this, it had not even
occurred to me that I too was an unmarried Basin widely over sixteen
years of age, and yet a little under forty, when--
To the choicest seat in the very largest herring-box, the back of which
was stylishly bedizened by the splendors of the star bedquilt, I heard
my own name called:
"Major Paul Henry and the Widder Rafe!"
Who and where was the Widow Rafe? Lo! Vesty stepped out. To be
sure--the formal, the flag-raising, the "Occasion" name of Vesty!
I led her to her place, but, as for me, I sat down, lost to mortal
woes, silent and dazed, among the stars.
"Didn't you want to sit with me?" said Vesty, her face rather grave.
"Oh, why do you ask that?"
"You looked, when they called our names, as though you didn't want to."
Now I tried to dwell upon the words of Captain Leezur, but, however
callous I succeeded in appearing on the outside, at heart I was a
happy, happy bean-pole.
"I was stunned," I said. "Besides, you see, I did not expect to be
invited."
"Why not, Major Henry?"
Oh, the beautiful Basin! the beautiful Basin! I tried to speak, but
could not.
"You never seemed before," said she, a sea-shell color glowing in her
cheeks, "to feel above us!"
She felt humbled, and my poor brain was too dizzy and incredulous to
frame fitting words. I swallowed hard; that was a Basin prerogative,
and by exerting it a direct Basin inspiration seemed to come to me.
"Feel above you! O Vesty!"
At that the sea-shell color went away down low, even to her lips, but
no further illumination came to me.
Past ghostly hill and moor and still-gleaming flood we flew. "I am
happy," I could say at last, "as I ought not to be. In all scenes and
places where I may ever be I shall remember this, Vesty."
She shivered a little. Ah! the sad old shawl! I clinched my hands.
Past hill and moor and still-gleaming flood: the light of day changed
to one unfathomed, possible, as of sweet, unspoken dreams becoming
blessed at nightfall.
Then all at once, round and full above a distant hill-top, rose the
hoyden moon, and the Basins saluted her with shouts of natural delight,
all save Vesty and I, who were silent.
Now, I saw, was the hour when each Basin put his arm about his girl. I
could not have touched my girl, not under all the rollicking moonbeams
that ever fired the heart of youth and man. Farther she seemed to me
than that far white hill-top, glittering and high.
Yet it pierced me that it was a gloomy ride for her. "It was good and
kind of them," I said, "to place a poor old fellow like me here beside
you; but you should have one of those rosy, handsome lads with you; you
so young, though we forget it. Your life is yet to live."
At the reproach in her eyes--a look of anger, too, but for its wild and
dark distress--my heart had almost leaped to my lips.
But--too merry the rollickers, who had fallen behind us, driving on the
homeward road; there had been several laughing, reckless adventures of
overturned herring-boxes in the snow-drifts; now the pole attached to
one of these had broken; the frightened horses had cleared themselves
and were veering madly on the narrow road, with the swinging cross-bar,
toward that side of the sled where my girl sat, unconscious of the
danger, still and pale.
I sprang, fell in a heap, but rose again somehow; and now at last I put
up my arm. It was not without strength--in this case more than mortal
strong--still, in the end, I fell.
When I came to myself we were still flying through the wild,
swift-changing scene, homeward bound; one of my hands was numb, and my
wrist bandaged, and my head--was on Vesty's shoulder! We were in right
Basin fashion now, only by needs it was Vesty's arm that was about me.
"Am I dead, Vesty?" said I, half believing it in my bliss; besides, I
had ever a great appreciation of the Irish humor.
"Oh, don't, major; don't!" said Vesty; "you saved me from getting
terribly hurt, they say--or----"
"Ugh!" I groaned.
"Your poor arm!" said she. "Oh, the pain!"
"Nothing pains me," said I.
"Your arm wasn't broken, major; but it 's terribly bruised and
sprained."
"And my neck, Vesty--you are sure that was not broken?"
She sighed, but since I was bent, she followed my humor.
"Never fear," said this demure young woman; "that 's too proud ever to
get a twist."
Here was a dilemma--that I should be developing into a wit and Vesty
into a coquette!
"Well," said I, "I must try and straighten myself up again," and with
that endeavor the pain did cut me so cruelly I fainted, quite without
any maiden affectation, back again on to Vesty's arm.
"Try and think," said she, when I could hear her voice, "that I am some
old woman, just trying to take care of you--somebody not disagreeable
to you, and keep still till we get home."
"Very well," said I, tormenting myself with the thought that she was
acting under some compelling sense of obligation; and that should never
be.
So I answered briefly all at once; and no sooner had I spoken than I
endured a gnawing consciousness that I was the hatefullest thing that
had escaped extermination that night. I kept still, however; the pain
was something to dread.
At least I had my beautiful mother's hair, thick and curling; that was
all Vesty could see now there on her shoulder. I comforted myself with
that thought as a child. I was weak, and I let some tears roll down my
face that Vesty could not see.
When the strong fellows took me out of the sleigh and bore me very
gently up to the door they stopped there for a moment, while I
wondered; and if any bitter sense of their physical supremacy pierced
me at that moment it ceased forever, as with a preconcerted signal from
the foremost they lifted the caps from their heads and cheered my name,
thrice and again, and again, with ringing cheers--and Vesty standing by!
The old Basin flag--almost as dilapidated as I--had heard nothing like
it; but when they dressed the swollen arm pain sent me off into
oblivion again. Vesty's was the last face I saw bending over me:
"Do you"--timidly--"do you want me to come to-morrow, and see how you
are?"
"Oh, if you will--thank you! Still, I am all right--I shall be all
right, never fear."
She lingered still a moment, but spoke calmly:
"If you don't care anything about me why did you risk your life to save
me from getting hurt?"
A demon possessed me. Pity I could have endured, but if she were stung
on by that inflicted sense of gratitude?
"Why did you risk your life to save me?"
"Oh, it was _pity_, child," I answered her; the surging bitterness
within made it almost a sneer--"natural human pity: it is strong in all
my race."
She looked at me with a beautiful sorrow, and as though she called me
proudly, to a better contempt of myself.
"I wish you had a mother," said she then, and flushed, the holy eyelids
low, pinning the old shawl--"as it is, I don't know what to say."