Chapter VIII: "vesty 's Married"

"Vesty 's married Gurd! Vesty 's gone and got married to Gurd!" said the children, big and joyful with news, on their way to school.

Yes, that was what she had done! I leaned heavily for a moment where I stood. That was Vesty!

Oh, child-madness! Sweet, lost child! Oh, pity of the world! and I crawling on with such a hurt; I did not think that should have wrung me so.

I was getting near her door; not anywhere else could I have gone. 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.

The room was nice as I had never seen it before, and Vesty was putting some pitiful little ornaments to rights at the cabinet-organ end.

She turned to me with so strange and febrile a look, yet with so wild and startled a welcome in her eyes.

"Hush!" I said. "You wanted me, child; I am here."

I saw that she had turned to lean against the organ, and that she was shaken with sobs.

"What have you done, Vesty? Wicked and false beyond any woman I know--_you_!"

"Have you seen him?" she sobbed.

"No, I have not seen Notely. You were married only last night."

"I wrote to him. There was only one way to save Notely from marrying me--only one way."

"You might have waited."

"Notely would never have waited. Notely meant to marry me."

"You should have married him, and not been false."

"I would rather be false than ruin Notely."

"You thought that it would ruin him? You had some assistance in that belief; his lady mother came to see you; the property is hers. If he transgresses, no property, no wealthy Grace Langham, no easy glory at the bar or in the state. What were those to your love, Vesty?"

She looked up, dim, and shook her head. "You have done a wilful, blind, impetuous thing. 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. He would have lifted, considered, cared for you."

Vesty held herself aloft, pale. "Gurdon is good. If any one ever asked Gurd for anything he always gave it to them."

I leaned my head on my hand, my heart leaping. Vesty came near me. "Tell me that you do not think it is a great mistake--such a great--a lost--mistake; for Notely's sake, tell me! I looked so for you to come. I wanted you."

To have touched one thread of her dark hair, bowed there before me! I did not touch her.

"Ah, the mistake!" I said; "ah, the pity of it! You do not tell me how _you_ have suffered, Vesty; how your own heart has been torn."

She took my hand, and, turning her head, pushed it gently away from her, as some blind instrument of torture.

"The last time I heard you sing, Vesty, you put your hands on Uncle Benny's poor, confused head and soothed and guided him. Who was there to help or guide you, motherless child, confused and lost?"

"Could you have seen the way?" How she entreated me!

"No one sees the way. But a broken heart and a life--misguided and lost though it be--_given_."

She looked up, dim, again.

"You will make them happy here," I added. Ah, that she understood! She looked about the room with a sad, brave pride, and rose and stood again, a striking picture there.

"They did need _me_," she said; "_he_ needed me more than Notely. And I shall get time, besides, to go over to father's and help with the children."

I nodded. "Oh, it is bravely done," I said. "We shall get on." For she was worn from her long mental struggle, and nearly wild in those dark-circled eyes. "There will be no more feathers in Captain Rafe's cake. Did I tell you? He and the boys invited me here to tea. They had been dressing birds and baking in the same morning. The plum cake was full of feathers, Vesty."

She laughed, and looked at me with shocked gratitude because I had made her laugh.

"Not chopped or sugared feathers, Vesty, but whole winged feathers of the natural flavor."

"Oh!" she said, "shouldn't you think they needed me?"

"Infinitely."

"Wait. Won't you come--come and see me often? Come evenings and hear the boys play--they _can_ play!--and tell me"--her hands trembled--"tell me about Notely!" Her soul bare in her uplifted eyes. Only to one as a wraith, a shadow, out of the ordinary pale of humanity, could she have looked like that!

"Always, whatever I hear or know," I answered her. "Gurdon will not be jealous of me." I smiled at her.

She smiled back in her dim way. "Jealous?" she said. "What! after we are married?"

"Ay, surely! The Basins are true to each other then always."

"That is the way," she said.

"That is the way," I said, and left her.

When Notely Garrison received the letter that Vesty had written him he read at the end: "When you get this I shall be married;" and the "for love of you, Notely, God knows that! You must make the most of all He gives you." Notely seemed to see her eyes.

Then he lost them and went down into a mental gulf. He locked himself in his room, to be ever alone; thoughts came to him that he could not bear: he rose and filled a glass twice with brandy and drained it. He ran his hand through the tumbled light hair that Vesty had so loved, and reeled out of the room with a laugh on his lips and a flush on his face.

"Mother, I have lost my girl!"

"O Notely! however mistaken I have been, what have I loved, whom have I loved in all this world but you, my child? Do not break my heart!"

"No, no, mother!" said Notely, going and standing beside her; "I am your natural--natural--protector."

As he stood thus, looking out with his drunken yet bright and tender eyes, the child of her breast whom she had robbed, she laid her head on his shoulder and began to cry. "Why, mother!" he said, almost sobered for the instant. Never had this son seen this mother weep. He led her to a lounge.

"I think," he said, struggling for thought very seriously; he racked his stormy, fuddled brain for what would most please her. "Now, when shall we have a wedding, mother? Grace--Grace Langham."

"O Notely!" She tried to detain him with her hand.

"I'll go--go ask her," he said. He passed out with an easy exaggeration of his usual lordly air, debonair and high, and at the same time genial.

Grace was alone in the arbor, in her favorite hammock, with a book, when Notely came up.

The look she gave him was full of amusement and anger and disgust.

These qualities somehow attracted him now. He was a gentleman; he tried to hold himself very erect against the trellis, and put the question delicately.

"Light--light--light of my soul!" he said.

Grace threw down her book and screamed. Then she put her hands over her face and fell to crying.

Notely took out his handkerchief and wiped his own eyes with the choicest deliberation of sympathy.

"All--all seem to be weeping to-day," he said.

"Oh, you wretch! you brute! you brute!" cried Grace.

Notely, though much flattered, continued diplomatically mopping his eyes.

At length he desisted; and Grace, looking out and seeing his keen, handsome profile staring out so desolately, came down from the hammock.

She shivered a little; drunken men were horrid, even dangerous. But Notely! She came up heroically and put her hand on his sleeve.

"There is one condition, Notely, on which I can--consider your proposal."

"Name," said Notely, with touching legal precision, "condition on which you'll marry me."

"You must never, never drink like this again. I did not know that you ever did this. Oh, how it has hurt me!" The lace fell back from her white arms, there was a perfume of flowers about her; bright brown eyes are lovelier when suffused with tears.

"Thanks!" said Notely, meaning to come up to the full measure of the occasion. "I'm not--not worthy. No--no--no previous engagement, how'ver."

But he was so gentle, she took his arm and led him in. Mrs. Langham, who always spoiled him, entering stately in silk and gems, engaged him in a game of cribbage, humoring gravely all his startling and original vagaries in the game.

"What does it mean?" cried Grace to Mrs. Garrison.

"It was an accident, not an excess, my child," said the mother, smiling proudly. "It should never be mentioned in connection with my son; it is no part of _him_."

Mrs. Garrison was strangely assured in her own heart that Vesty Kirtland would never tell the son of his mother's visit to her. She did not mean that Grace Langham should ever know the full cause that had unsettled him.

"We must be very tender with him, keep near to him," she said, "or, when he recovers, he may do himself harm, with remorse, and--the fear of losing your love, Grace."

They were very tender with him. And by good chance, too, the post brought a famed "Review," copying entire the brilliant fellow's essay on "American Politics," with the editor's comment of "masterly."

"See!" screamed Grace; "it says 'masterly.'"

"Of course it 's mast--mast--masterly," said Notely, his beautiful eyes burning.

They drove with him, the stout coachman perched for safety on the seat beside him. At evening he tried to catch Grace in the arbor and kiss her. She screamed and escaped.

"Come, dearest!" said his mother. She left the door wide between his sleeping-room and hers, and laid the triumphant review at his hand for his waking in the morning.

But on the morrow he was neither remorseful nor subdued, though his eyes were hollow. He smoked a great deal, and sang melancholy, unembarrassed snatches of song, after the manner of Captain Pharo, and made love to Grace, who was beautiful.

At evening he tucked his violin under his arm. "I am going down to call on the new Basin bride," he said, with airy, cheerful contempt for that class.

His mother paled. He went up to her and kissed her. "Do not fear, mother," he whispered.

The boys welcomed him somewhat eagerly. He had been their teacher on the violin, as well as the original donor of those beloved instruments. And they had thought he might not come to that house again.

"I've a new tune for you, boys," he said. Vesty came in. He rose and bowed, taking her hand. "I congratulate the new bride!" He would not look at her pallor or her great beseeching eyes.

"I've this to show you, boys, that I've been practising to-day." He had not touched the strings for forty-eight hours! There was a covert smile, sad, playful, not malicious, on his face as his hands touched them now.

Where he had been "practising" indeed! From what source he had got that music that he played for them now! He would never play the like again.

"Bah!" said he, at the close, with his old cheerful manner; "it is too sad! When one is possessed only for minor strains better cease fiddling. Do you want me to break this, or throw it into the fire when I get home, Gurdon? Then take her, lad! She 's a fine one, finer than yours. Take her in all good faith. Come!"

Gurdon reached out his hand, hesitating, voiceless pity in his honest eyes.

Notely sat and listened to the others; applauded in the old way. "You are beyond my teaching, lads," he said--and they played exquisitely. "You excel your master now. Well, well, my mellow old fiddle is better here with you." But he would never once look at Vesty, so pale and beseeching.

As he passed out Vesty started impulsively, then looked at her husband.

"Go and speak to him, Vesty," said Gurdon. "Maybe he wanted to speak with you a moment."

Vesty stepped out into the dark, and she called, almost in a breathless voice: "Notely!"

"Ah!" He came back.

She held out her hands to him. "Forgive me, Notely! I meant it for your--I meant----"

He took her hands firmly in his and pressed his lips down to hers. "My wife!" he said, slowly and solemnly; "my wife!" and dropped her hands and left her.

She stepped back through the doorway, sobbing.

"Was he angry with you, Vesty?" her husband said.

"No! no!"

"Did he say as he was still fond of you, or anything like that?" said the bold brother Fluke.

"Nay! nay!" said Gurdon. "Vesty's married now: nor Vesty nor he would ever have word like that."