Sarah Pratt McLean Greene

“ I sighed. "What do you think he would tell me about the weather?"
"What we all say: 'The wind's canting in from the west, and you'll see this fog hop.'"
"It is what I say, and shall say forever, in such a case. 'The wind's canting in from the west, and you'll see this fog hop.'"
"You only pretend to be a Basin!"
"God forgive you! No; I don't pretend. I shall never get over it. I shall be one forever and ever, wherever I go, Vesty." ”

“ Mrs. Kobbe and Miss Pray, leaving me with an encouraging smile, both sat themselves down, and by the simplest means of descent slid safely and swiftly down the incline, amid ringing cheers and acclamation from the wharf.
"Come on, major!" called the captain. "Touch-and-go——"
And I! Where now are my faithful henchmen, the men of mighty stature who do my bidding, the liveried giants who open the door of my carriage? The breeze blew in my face, and the "Eliza Rodgers" waited below, and I heard the rough audience from the wharf shouting that I should be up to that much! ”

“ 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." ”

“ Kobbe and Miss Pray had done, I was now a startlingly marked object of ridicule.
Little cared we. That adventure down the slip, ignominious though it was, had put fire into my heart. I entered eagerly into the captain's scheme of hauling and rifling the Millport lobster-traps, in the convenient fog which, as if sent by heaven, hid us for a little space from the land. The blood of ancestral pirates and robbers bounded hilariously once more in my long-easeful, sluggish veins. ”

“ She took my hand; the tenderness in her eyes covered their pity. I felt no sting. "I feel safe when you will come sometimes," she said; "you are so strong—so strong!" She touched my hand admonishingly; it was as though she lifted me.
"I misjudged your husband, Vesty; rather, I did not know him. He is a good lad, this Gurdon."
"Oh, he is!" A dream swept over her face, as dreams will; the mad birds whistling "love" down by the sea-wall, the gay waters flashing—Notely Garrison. ”

“ So Vesty's heart was broken in her, and to me she came, as to a father, or more as to a friendly, favoring ghost.
"Take me back to the Basin!"
"Yes."
She sat in a kind of patient apathy, numb, her heart faithful with the dead.
"How little Gurd will call for you when he sees you again!" I spoke; but to waken her was to bring such a torrent of tears, choking, she entreated me not.
But, "It is well, I believe," I said to her; "there is life enough! Be sure he does not lack for life. What! do you think we have found the best of it, and all of it, here? I imagine God has enough! ”

“ You were piqued, proud, angry, and so you gave yourself, body and soul, to this mad leap."
"I don't care for my body (sob) or soul (sob) if Notely isn't sick."
"There is One who is above Notely, to punish as well as to pity, Vesty."
"God"—very softly—"oh, yes!" The bewildered, grief-tormented eyes looked faith into mine. "I didn't mean that. I asked Him. I could only find one way. He won't let Notely come to harm, but help him to make the best of himself."
"Your lover is a brave man. He would not have been selfish toward you as this great hulk, Gurdon. He knew you intelligently. ”

“ Her eyes looked infinitely sorrowful into his; blushes, like pain, dyed her cheeks.
"O Vesty, my pure one!—then tell me that you love me still—love me as you used to do—and I'll go away content, and not come any more. Touch my head as you used to do; kiss me once more, with those words, and——"
The baby's white, sleeping palm pressed hard against the mother's burning cheek.
"Such words must not be any more, Notely. Go away and be the good, powerful man God meant you to be, and I shall love you more than I ever did in my life." ”

“ What will you have? I have growing fame, prosperity, an accomplished society woman for my wife. Was not that what you wished for me?" His words stung.
Vesty had her dim look; she had turned cold; her speech groped pitifully. "But I think I saw—I think I understood a little, after all—because I loved you—what are you doing it for, Notely?"
"Ah, there, indeed!—what for? I have lost my object, you know, Saint Vesta. For fame and frolic and the devil, I suppose—since we are talking face to face with an immortal Basin—and to fill up the time generally." ”

“ VESTY OF THE BASINS
I THE MEETIN'
Now is it to be rain or a storm of wind at the Basin?
I love that foam out on the sea; those boulders, black and wet along the shore, they are a rest to me; the clouds chase one another; in this dim north country the wind is cool and strong, though it is now midsummer; at sunset you shall see such color!
From a little, low, storm-beaten building comes the sound of a fog-horn. That is the gift of Melchias Tibbitts, deceased, to the Basin school-house. ”

“ As for Fluke Rafe, he is a good fellow, but he was always wild as a hawk."
"O Notely! if you would only help such men, as you might, instead of being as wild as a hawk with them!"
"It takes a hawk to catch a hawk, my dear: all the ministers will tell you that."
"Is that what you are doing it for?"
"Well, no; since you are a Basin, and only truth avails, there has been hitherto no deep moral design in my merry orgies at the Neck. But to-night, Vesty, is my grand affair; to be hallowed by the presence of all the Basins: my feast and ball to them, you know—my oldest and best friends. ”

“ Uncle Benny, dying, slept with a smile on his lips; and little Gurd, homeless, fatherless, laid in this poor habitation or in that, humbly and roughly, slept in beautiful health with a smile on his lips; and we, unwise, watched dolefully.
"You must not stay," said Vesty. "You are not used to lose your rest. I am so used to watching, and—I am not afraid. Lunette said she would come to help me before morning." ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Vesty shivered. With all her earnest, sad experience of life, with her true love for Notely, she was yet in no haste to be bound. Wild, too, at heart; or else somehow the sea wind and the swift sails had freed her.
"Don't say that again. Come, catch the fish for our dinner, Note."
"I'm only a humble Basin, Miss Kirtland. I didn't think to fetch no bait."
Vesty took a parcel of six small herrings from her pocket, laughing.
"Yes, our women are smart," sighed Notely. ”

“ Over ledges and salt marshes, and the thin, storm-broken trees, and out there on the water there 's a strange color growing. Even the Basins seldom fail to start, at least, for home by sunset.
So a little white sail puts out on the crimson sea. The breeze is dying out, the waters lap, subside. Notely takes down the sail and rows.
The sea fades to softer colors, hushed, wondrous, near the dim shore.
"It isn't ever known, in any place in all the world, that angels—no, I know—but look, Note!—they almost might."
"Only here at the Basin, Vesty; when that very last light fades. ”

“ 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." ”

“ He winked at me; fearing that I had not understood, he winked still broader; then, moving his back toward his two companions, he directed full upon me a wink so vast and expressive that I endeavored at once to signify my enlightenment by replying in kind; but, unpractised as I was in the art, I could only infer what the unlovely aspect of my features must have been from the look of sorrowful disgust which immediately thereafter overspread Vesty's own. ”

“ Notely put up sail and skirted the shore with his boat till he came to the waters of the Basin. Then he looked out eagerly, but Vesty was not on the banks waiting.
"Was there ever a Basin known to be on time?" he muttered, smiling and flushing too. He was always jealous of her.
He made fast his boat and sprang with light steps over the sea-wall.
Here was a good sign; so the Basins held. No sign so propitious to a love affair as meeting with one of God's innocent ones—a "natural." And here was Dr. Spearmint (Uncle Benny) leading the children to school—the very little ones. ”

“ Kobbe, not only in her method of performance on the organ, but in her sparkling features, young and beautiful, her wide-flowing curled hair.
"How old does she seem to you to be, sir?"
"She looks to me," I said, with honesty, "to be eighteen or twenty—twenty-five at the most."
"Sir, she is forty!" said Captain Judah proudly. Angie Fay shot him a bewitching glance through the open door.
"She is not only a skilled performer on the keys, as you see, but she is a wide-idead thinker. ”

“ She would be at the Rafes' cottage now—so easily do the Basin brides move, without wedding journey or trousseau.
The wash-tubs and cooking-stove stood at one end of the long, low-raftered room, the cabinet organ and violins at the other. Captain Rafe and the boys were out, hauling their sea-traps, and Vesty had been doing the washing that they were wont to do for themselves; the mother, like her own, being dead. ”

“ If you had loved me much—such a man as to be true to me through hard work and time and sorrow and all—then you could not have borne to be any less a man, Notely Garrison, though you lost me, or whatever you lost. ”

“ Notely Garrison had led the dance with Vesty; now she sat rocking her baby, near Gurdon, who turned to them with a smile and swept a softer strain now and then, as when he played them to sleep at home.
"Introduce me to the 'mezzo-tint' study yonder, the mediaeval picture over there, rocking her infant, back of the fiddlers."
Notely slightly turned from his fellow-reveller, flushing.
"There are pretty girls enough here for you to dance with, Sid; she would not like it. They are such simple people they would not understand. She is married, you see." ”

“ X A CALL FROM NOTELY'S YACHT
"Why did you never come? I sent for you."
"I was afraid, Vesty, that new burden of motherhood, which you carried, might take some physical mark or blight from a presence like mine. But he is beautiful!"
He lay upon her arm, and he was beautiful, full fed from her breasts, formed large and fair, his hair already waved as by a court barber! Her eyes rested on him. Would all the weak and miserable of the world be well-nigh forgotten now? She raised them to me again—Basin eyes—all the weak and miserable of the world were dearer. ”

“ He takes no interest at home or in the fishing since you and those pleasure-men you have with you have been keeping open house at the Neck. When he comes home he has been wild and drinking, and is moody. It is a week since you have been away from your home and wife with your yacht anchored here off shore, hunting and cruising, and such times at the old Garrison place at night—it is the talk!"
Notely laughed and rose. Vesty had been standing looking down at him earnestly, where he sat in her doorway: she held her baby asleep on one strong arm, its face against her neck. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He looked away from her with mischief in his eyes, and hummed a line through his fine Greek nose, as Captain Pharo might.
"I don't doubt it, but you were high in the college too—for Lunette saw it in a paper: so high it was spoken of!"
"I just asked them to do that, Vesty. People can't refuse me, you know. I get whatever I ask for." ”

“ And you are poor and all alone, and you never make anything of yourself—but somehow I always think you are pretending; somehow—I think—you are stronger than us all."
"You are a little arch-flatterer," I said; "and the Basin, out of its goodness of heart, has made me vain, that is all. It won't do. I need to sweep some more floors and peel some more potatoes." She would not smile; she shook her puzzled head at me. "And, Vesty," I said, "where are you going now?"
"Why, to Uncle Benny's! Didn't you know?" exclaimed the girl eagerly, with whom the realities of life were always pressing, stern. ”