Vesty of the Basins Part 12

"The road is winding, the road is dark, Sail away to Galilee!"

Her voice seemed to me, in that dim hour, to take up Uncle Benny and bear him away, with his great hurt, to the breast of his mother, in heaven, to be healed.

He joined her in the chorus, and then they sang together, she modulating sweetly her full, rich tones to his. Her voice made heavenly rapture of Uncle Benny's song:

'There 's a tree I see in Paradise-- Sail away to Galilee.

It 's the beautiful, waiting Tree of Life-- Sail away to Galilee, Sail away to Galilee, Put on your long white robe of peace, And sail away to Galilee."

VI

THIS GREATER LOVE

"How can I approach the girl?" thought Mrs. Garrison. "If I should send word for Vesta Kirtland to come here and see me, Notely would be sure to hear of it; he would wonder; ask questions. If I go down and see her it will provoke endless comment and wonder among those people.

I never visit them. There is no other way. Notely takes the Langhams for the day in his boat to-morrow. I will be driven to the Basin. I will ask Vesta indifferently, by the way, to go with me in those woods where I played in childhood, too timid now to walk there alone. They will say, as well as they can express it, that sentiment must be getting fas.h.i.+onable! Never mind. I shall see and talk with the girl.

We will see."

Mrs. Garrison alighted from her carriage before she reached Vesty's door.

"Wait here," she said to her coachman. Vesty saw her approach. Off there in the bay, sublimely guarding and making a gateway to its waters, were two little green mountain peaks of islands, just a narrow surge of the waters flowing between; the "Lions," the "Twin Brothers,"

they were called.

One does not look off daily, from one's very infancy, on such a view for nothing. Mrs. Garrison saw the "lion" in Vesty's quick-divining eyes, and was glad.

"Anything but heart-break and slow consumption. Of battle I am not afraid," she said to herself.

"I took a fancy to leave my carriage and walk a bit among those old trees. I used to know them well. Will you go with me, child?"

"Certainly, Mrs. Garrison." Vesty handed the baby which she was tending to its mother, and walked away with the fine lady.

"Vesta Kirtland," said Mrs. Garrison, as they entered the shadow of the woods, "your face tells me plainly that you know I have some object in asking you to walk with me here. I have.

"I am proud, cold, indifferent regarding you people here; I have not noticed you, hardly even by recognition, if we chanced to meet in the lanes; yes, I know. I bring no personal claims. But"--she was going to say, "you are fond of Notely," but she looked at the girl, and a proud, sarcastic smile curved her lips instead--"my son, Notely Garrison, adores you, I believe? I do not know whether you care for him; I presume not so ardently; but if you were even a little fond of him, for the sake of childhood days when he made you his little playmate--you would try to do the best for his good now--would you not, child?"

Vesty showed so few symptoms of slow consumption, and the lions in the gateway of her soul glowed so ominously, that Mrs. Garrison concluded to be brief. She turned her face away a little; the operation was unpleasant, and she took out the knife, only in speech.

"Notely has quixotic ideas in many ways: if he had given any ground for a foolish confidence in his boyhood he would hold to it now, against all his life's advancement, filial duty--yes, even against personal inclination, for that matter."

Mrs. Garrison was a resolved surgeon. "Do you know what Notely's prospects are in life--socially, politically, financially? But he must take the tide as it serves. To turn now is to lose all. He has many friends. He is beloved by a rich, beautiful, accomplished girl, influential in that sphere where her family have for so long moved. I seem cruel, child."

"Call me by my name. Call me Vesty Kirtland. I hate you! With my whole heart and soul I hate you!"

So the bold lions at the gate, desperately guarding sea-depths of pain behind.

"Really, Vesta Kirtland! if things were different I would rather be mother-in-law to you than to Grace Langham. You are a pupil worthy of my metal! You are fire, I see. Bravo!"

Vesty stood with her head on her arm, resting against a tree, holding herself.

"I do not know that there is anything more to say. Notely will never seek his own release. But, if you loved him _truly_----"

"I do!"

Flaming scorn and a smile as defiant as Mrs. Garrison's own.

"Do you?" said the surgeon. "Then release him."

"You told a lie. Notely does not want to be released. He loves me, not Grace Langham. You know how it is with men. If I should go to your house and say to him, 'Come with me; come down to my father's house, since there is no other way, and help troll, and haul the traps, and make the nets, and be with me,' he would come!"

"Yes," said the lady, pale, "he would go. Therefore, as I said, do you save him."

"What makes that life so much better, out there, than ours, that I should give him up to it, and break my heart and his? Are you one that they make?"

"All people do not regard me with such disfavor." She looked at the girl almost wistfully. "Life _is_ hard, Vesta, and exacting, spite of all that we can do; and the world is hard and exacting, supercilious, ready to pick at a flaw--you do not know."

"Well, I think Notely will be happier here with me."

Yet one could see the girl's pale resolve, only she was turning the knife a little on the heartless surgeon. It cut sharply.

"For a month or two, Vesta, yes."

"And then?"

"One who has been accustomed to champagne from an ice-cooler will not be satisfied forever with sucking warm spring water in the sun, however wholesome."

"Ah!"

"He will grow very tired. He will not speak, but he will regret."

"Ah! he will think what he has given up; and it _is_ so much, all in all; yes, it is too much!"

Mrs. Garrison turned, startled at the girl's voice. The lions held the gateway, sad and gloomy. Into those heaving depths behind she should not enter.

"You have not told me anything. I only got you to say it over. I had thought it all out for myself. I do not mean, any more, that Notely shall marry me."

Mrs. Garrison gave her a wild glance of grat.i.tude, of sorrow. In that instant her heart yearned intensely over the long-limbed girl, standing so sorrowful and proud, and cut by Fate.

"How will you manage?" she cried impulsively. "He _is_ so fond of you!"

"I can manage. Promise me one thing?"

"Anything I have."

Vesty smiled. "Promise me, if Notely should be sick, in danger, I mean, or hurt, unfortunate, it might be--you would let me know, and let me come and care for him, just while he needed care. I want you to promise me!"

Her voice took the sharp tone, her eyes the frenzy, of a bird guarding its young.