Part 46 (1/2)
XXV
IN THE LANE
I met her on the morrow in the lane. She would have pa.s.sed me with a mere morning salutation, but I spoke to her. ”I will tell the story at least,” I thought, ”before I go away.”
”Vesty,” said I timidly. Even the handsomest of the Basins were timid in putting the question; and I, so miserable, and believing it not to be a question at all, but only a confession, was choking.
”Yes, sir,” said Vesty, with rea.s.suring meekness, but there was something wicked about her mouth and eyes. O Vesty, had you been of the world I fear you would have been a sad one!
”What did you mean,” said I, starting in wise Basin fas.h.i.+on, at a millennium distance from the intended point, ”what did you mean, the other night, when you said that you wished I had a mother?”
”Oh, because we all need them, for comfort--and then, sometimes--for correction.”
”And which did you think that I needed one for?”
Vesty turned her sheathed eyes away toward the safe west with a smile that gave me no other answer.
”It is lifting to be a glorious day,” I said.
”If you want to talk about the weather,” rippled the girl's voice, quite gently, ”why don't you go and sit on the log with Captain Leezur?
He rolled down another this morning.”
”I am going,” 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!”
”G.o.d forgive you! No; I don't pretend. I shall never get over it. I shall be one forever and ever, wherever I go, Vesty.”
She looked down and paled. ”Are you going away, major?”
”Yes.” Then said I, looking at her, ”How far do you think pity could lead one, Vesty--you, so pitiful and kind? Do you think that it could even lead you--to marry me? To take little Gurd and go away with me--and help me to live--for pity?”
”No! oh, no!” she gasped.
”Then,” said I, grasping hard on my cane with my feeble hand, ”as G.o.d wills!”
”Because,” said Vesty, ”I'm not so unselfish as that. I can't marry you for that reason--because--I love you!”
The red of the Basin sunset, that would be by and by unsurpa.s.sed, glowed in her cheeks.
As for me--forever a Basin--I dashed my hand across my eyes. A Voice above land and sea rolled toward me in that moment, through her voice, in gathering waves that covered all the pitiful accident and despair of a maimed, halting, birth-marked universe:
”And the crooked places shall be made straight; and the rough places plain. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart.”
XXVI