Chapter XVIII: Uncle Benny Sails Away to Galilee

Say the philosophers how, to the properly sane mind, there is no sorrow. But Vesty, only a Basin, fighting Christ's war against the flesh--Vesty had sorrow.

"It was," she confessed to me alone, I being as a ghost or confessor--"it was like pulling my heart out, to have Notely go away so. It was like taking little Gurd away--but it was the only way."

"He has gone back to his wife?"

"Yes." Vesty shivered. I had chanced to meet her in the lane, and the wind was chill.

"And what are you going to do, Vesty?"

"I am going where they want me to help." She held the thin, frayed shawl at her neck, the rosy child wrapped as usual on her arm: "there is always some one wanting me to help, and little Gurd is not so much care now but I can get along with it."

"You go out as general drudge or charwoman!" I felt my nostrils quiver and a bitter harshness in my voice.

Vesty looked at me with surprise. "I go to help," she said, "just as you helped me, with Uncle Benny, when I was sick."

"Oh, I could do"--the child knew not with what a glance I studied her face--"what it is hard to let you do, Vesty."

A gentle pallor at that, as though I had been strong and seemly in her sight; the Basin eyes fixed on me as if with a community of experience and sorrow.

"Shall you go away from the Basin this winter, as you did before?"

"I think so;" for myself, I could not look at her. "You see, I have my--'show,' that I must attend to a little in the winter: and here, exposed to the hard climate, if I were taken ill, or should be in want, there is no one who would care for me, you know."

"You should never want or suffer," cried Vesty of the Basins, "while I have two hands to work with!"

"Perhaps then," I murmured gravely, with sphinx face, "I might stay. I have to ask so much, Vesty, you see. All my life seems to be asking, not giving."

"I don't know who you are!" said she, with puzzled brow, the utter frankness of Basin speech escaping her unawares. "What I thought first, when I saw you--I never mind that now. 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. "He stood out in the water, _that day_, helping get the men in, and he was around that evening, singing, without any dry clothes or fire; nobody thought, then. And you know he 's had a cough ever since, and now--he 's sick."

A thought smote me. "He won't lead the children to school any more, then?"

Vesty's lip quivered. "Come," she said; "he has asked for you."

At sight of Vesty with her child and me, Uncle Benny, to whom the shadows were coming as to the truly sane, without grief or surprise, touched his unribboned throat with feeble apology.

"I look dreadful," he murmured. That was not troubling him! He had a secret beyond all that, I saw.

"There 's been ten in to call to-day," he exulted sweetly, with folded hands of satisfaction, death's bloom high in his cheeks; "ten!--ahem!--to call."

Vesty looked at me with her sad smile. "It is because we love you, Uncle Benny," she said, "and you took--take such care of the children. Who?" she asked, for his mind was on it.

"Mother," said Uncle Benny, since he was sane now, "and"--he mentioned a number of the living Basins, and went on, in the same tone--"and Fluke and Gurd."

Vesty looked at him with touching sorrow and despair, being troubled and not sane.

"They played," he said, his hands moving with the recollection of the melody; "they played wonderful--but sometimes it was an organ!"

"Good!" I said, Vesty stood so pale. "We are getting health, I see. We are on the straight road now."

Uncle Benny, hearing my voice, beckoned me.

"All the things in the drawer!" he said, "because you were 'flicted." His eyes shone lovingly and compassionately on me. "All for you. But go and see!"

Enough surely to relieve all physical defects! The worn and treasured blue necktie, for one thing; a little pocket hand-glass, a pin-cushion devoted to the tender ingathering of strayed and crooked pins, some sprays of mint and lavender among the rest.

I felt his eyes beaming proudly on me--treasures beautiful from long habit, now yielded in a spirit so complete and lofty! I brushed the back of my hand along my eyes, in the Basin way.

"You mustn't feel bad," said Uncle Benny, as I came back to him: "nature didn't do much for you, but it 's going to be all right. I had a talk with mother."

"I am glad of that, Uncle Benny."

"Oh, yes! it 's going to be all right." So full of secrets! he spoke excitedly, with discreetly covered joy; "you needn't feel bad."

He lay back, lest he should say too much. And so, as he, wise, covered up his sublime knowledge among us, unwise, with smiling lips, he sank into a sleep.

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."

Starless, moonless darkness showed through the low window, and the candle was burning dimly on the table.

"I shall stay," I said. I had a student's knowledge of death. "He will wake soon, and then--it will be morning."

But Vesty's dear face turned to me with the sorrow of dying.

I was not used to lose my rest. I dozed faintly, with faithfully sleepless lids. In that east of heavy blackness the candle made a strange sun. The world, elsewhere so far from heaven, here at the Basin ascended to it by a common stairway, and little children and the pure of heart climbed upward without dread.

"May I go?" I said, watching them.

"If a child leads thee," said a voice.

So I looked to a little child, to take my hand, and I saw my mother's face waiting from above, and the beams of glory narrowed; it was the candle burning dimly on the table.

"Notely!" I heard a voice calling.

I started up.

"Notely!" called Uncle Benny, very sweetly and tremulously from the bed. "Where is he? I led him to school."

Vesty had gone to the door, and leaned her head there, as if to press back the unbearable anguish and pathos sweeping over her like a flood.

"Notely! Little Note! He was the handsomest of them all, but sometimes he ran away. Notely! Little Note! come home with Uncle Benny now; come home!"

"He will come," I said, going to him: "he will come home."

"Vesty! Where is she? I led her to school."

She tottered toward him and pressed her warm hands upon his, cold.

"And you," he said, trying to turn to me, lovingly, faintly, "you are one of them. I will bring you home. Sing, Vesty; sing 'Sail away----'"

"'As Christ went down the Lonesome Road'"

Vesty's voice broke.

"Sing, little one," said Uncle Benny, covering his glad secrets again with a sort of heavenly duplicity; "it 's all right--sing."

"'He left the crown and He took the cross--
Sail away to Galilee!
He left the crown and He took the cross--
Sail away to Galilee,
Sail away to Galilee!
* * * *
"'There 's a tree I see in Paradise----'"

"Sing, Vesty!"

"It 's the beautiful waiting Tree of Life--
Sail away to Galilee!
It 's the beautiful----'"

Uncle Benny hushed her with an awed motion of the hand, and a look upward of unspeakable recognition--he, without doubt, seeing now, beyond us blind.