Vesty of the Basins Part 47

"Aren't you coming?" said she, wistfully again, and paled and turned to me.

The look in her eyes--she wanted me! Oh, how my heart leaped--a trick taught it at the Basin, which now it will never get over.

But, sly as Captain Leezur, I hid my delight in the folds of my great overcoat.

Long we walked together. "What inspired you to this? This is best of all," I said.

"Why?" said Vesty, glowing and beautiful.

"Because now I see again that you are 'Vesty.' And my Lady of M---- was a possible dream always. But Vesty seemed unattainable.

"That rose color," I added, looking at her cheeks, "I never saw anywhere except at certain sunsets--you know where."

For we of the Basin--however wilfully inclined sometimes, as Captain Pharo--at heart bow down to our wives, and make love to them, long, long after we are married: quite, indeed, until death do us part, as all true Basins should.

"Paul!" said Vesty. Now "Paul" was really my name, with considerable before and after it, but never mind all that.

"Paul!"

"Well?" I said.

Confused with the rose-color blushes: "I forgot," she murmured, "what I was going to say."

No, she had not forgotten it! Her face was eloquent; only she cannot talk with that fluency with which she can look beautiful and sigh.

Especially when she would express anything of deep feeling, she has a way of brus.h.i.+ng a speck of dust from my right shoulder, and letting her hand rest there a moment, that tells me worlds, but would not go for much, I admit, on a smart female rostrum.

But "Paul!" that voice creeps to me at all times, for counsel, for sympathy; comes impulsively, that is the best of it--comes ever impulsively. I do not know why I am so blessed among my fellows! Just as the lad comes to me--he, too, of the highest breeding. I never saw a look of wonder or shrinking on his face; and once, in an illness that he had he clung to me, cried for me, even above his mother.

I gave my heart to him then. When a sick child, with a mother like Vesty, turns and clings to one--well, it is like to set one up.

He quotes me, refers to me, defends me, apes all my mannerisms, and struts with them proudly as clear legal type and doc.u.mentary evidence.

He has my name, Gurdon "Paul," with the rest: he is my heir. Handsome, stalwart, as our race has notably been; loving, generous, fearless, all that the world can give him will be his besides; tutors, splendors, wide, luxurious travel, the entrance to glittering courts--only, G.o.d grant that he may find just the Basin at last!--the true, the pitiful, the pure of heart: that he may come up to the stature of his father, who knew but one plain path, and that the royal one; who, in the battle with fear and death, was greater than the storm.

So, often in rich and high cathedrals with Vesty by my side, the organ has but to peal forth plaintively, and those stately, emblematic windows fade away to others, broken, swaying in the wind, and the roar of the tides comes in, and high above the great clouds pa.s.s wondrously.

And I think how the Christ, painted in purple and crimson glories in these walls, and before whose image the hosts bow down, was a poor Basin of the Basins, in His birth and in His death; who had never a sure pillow, and who minded all woes save His own.

And above the written scroll of the preacher I hear the old prophetic voice, how "not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many n.o.ble, are called." . . .

Vesty walks this new way with me, that was not of her knowledge or choosing with a patience in any tedious form or imposed convention, far surpa.s.sing mine.

Then I tell her that I am only an adopted Basin, and have missed so many of the first important years of good breeding; when I was taught to be only moody, if I would, and solitary and selfish.

Then she turns the rose-color, and her eyes s.h.i.+ne on me; and if I have been patient with some vapid visitor, uttering weary commonplaces (longing, oh how infinitely, all the while in my heart, for Captain Leezur and the log!) she comes to me afterward, and leans over me with a caress and says, "That 's a dear Basin!"

Thus I observe always my lady's rank, and am happy when she exalts me to it.

Sometimes in dark hours, when gigantic shadows, unexplained, oppress heart and soul----lo! the "Boys" play softly to us once again upon instruments above our art, with a touch that thrills above these masters.

We recognize that life is not a draught, either of joy or misery, but a sweet, stern task set us, in a failing tenement; and half between smiles and tears we dream how, to that darkening school-house, when the shadows grow heartbroken and weary, some loving Basin, only great because of the faith that was in him, shall come to lead us home.

THE END