LXONCE MORE HUGH SINGS
Between that great eastward bend nearly opposite the mouth of the Arkansas, which in later years was cut off and is now, or was yesterday, Beulah Lake—between it and Ozark Island below—a white-jacket came up from the passenger deck far enough to show his head to the watchman above and warily asked a question."Six," was the reply. "Including me—seven."The inquirer ran wildly down again, but theEnchantresssped on through the glorious moonlight as though he scarcely mattered. On the texas roof Mrs. Gilmore sat with "California," her husband with Watson, Hugh with Ramsey. But only the last two were out on its forward verge. Mrs. Gilmore had found it cool there and with the others had drawn back a few steps, into the pleasant warmth of the chimneys. For average passengers the evening was far gone, but not for players, pilots, Californians, or lovers—of the river.A mile or so farther on, the white-jacket reappeared and, gliding by all others to reach his captain, said, with mincing feet and a semicircular bow, while presenting a tray of six, not seven, sherry cobblers:"Sev'l gen'lemen's comp'ments, an' ax, will Mis' Gil'——""What gentlemen? Who?""Sev'l gen'lemen, yassuh. Dey tell me dess say, sev'l gen'lemen. Sev'l gen'lemen ax will Mis' Gilmo' have de kin'ness fo' to sing some o' dem same songs she sing night afo' las' in de ladies' cabin an' las' night up hyuh.... Yass'm, whiles dey listens f'om de b'ileh deck.""Has my father gone to bed?" asked Ramsey."No'm, he up yit. He done met up wid dese sev'l gen'lemen an' find dey old frien's—callin' deyse'v's in joke Gideon' Ban'—an' he talkin' steamboats wid 'em——"The speaker tittered as Ramsey inquiringly extended her arms out forward and crossed her wrists. "Yass'm," he said, "hin' feet on de front rail, yass'm."It seemed but fair that Mrs. Gilmore, to meet the compliment generously, should sing at the very front of the hurricane roof, just over the forward guards of the boiler deck. But Ramsey and Hugh kept their place. Ramsey wanted to be near the sky, she explained, when songs were sung on the water by moonlight, and eagerly spoke for two or three which her friend had sung of old on theVotaressto spiritualize the "acrobatics" of the Brothers Ambrosia.The singer's voice was rich, trained, and mature, and her repertory a survival of young days—nights—before curtains and between acts: Burns, Moore, Byron, and Mrs. Norton, alternating with "The Lavender Girl," "Rose of Lucerne," "Dandy Jim o' Caroline," and "O Poor Lucy Neal." And now she sang her best, in the belief that while she sang the pair up between her and the pilot-house were speaking conclusively. Let us see."Ramsey," said Hugh, and waited—ten seconds—twenty.Well, why should he not? In eight years and a half there were ten million times twenty seconds and she had waited all of them. At length she responded and the moment she did so she thought she had spoken too promptly although all she said was, "Yes?""The hour's come at last," said Hugh."What hour?—hour to name that boat?""Yes, to name that boat. Only not that first. Ramsey, I've told your father all I ever wanted to tell you.""Humph!" The response was so nearly in the manner of the earlier Ramsey, "the Ramsey he had begun with" and whom she remembered with horror, that she recognized the likeness. The further reply had been on her tongue's end, that to tell her father only that could not have taken long, or some such parrying nonsense; but now it would not come. She felt her whole nature tempted to make love's final approach steep and slippery, but again without looking she saw his face; his face of stone; his iron face with its large, quiet, formidable eyes that could burn with enterprise in great moments; a face set to all the world's realities, and eyes that offered them odds, asking none. So seeing she knew that if she answered with one least note of banter she would make herself an object of his magnanimity, than which she would almost rather fall under his scorn—if he ever stooped to scorn. Suddenly she remembered the deadlock and was smitten with the conviction that these exchanges were love's last farewell. Now it was hard to speak at all."What was it you told him?""I told him how long I'd loved you, and why.""We both love the river so," murmured Ramsey in a voice broken by the pounding of her heart."Yes. I told him that, for one thing. And I told him how gladly I would have asked for you long ago had I not seen myself, as you so often saw me on theVotaress——""Condemned to inaction," she softly prompted; for if this was farewell a true maiden must speed the parting."Yes.""By an absolute deadlock," she murmured on. "My father sees it. He knows it's one yet and must always be one.""No, a lock but not a deadlock. It's a lock to which your brothers do not hold the key."The pounding in her breast, which had grown better, grew worse again. "Who holds it?""Your father. I have just told him so. At no time would I have hesitated to ask for you if the key had been with your brothers. I would have got a settlement from them, sink or swim, alive or dead. I believe in lover's rights, Ramsey, and I'll have a lover's rights at any risk or cost that falls only on me. Those old threats—yes, I know how fiercely they are still meant—and they have always had their weight; but they've never of themselves weighed enough to stop me. I've held off and endured, waiting not for a change of heart in your brothers, but for an hour counselled, Ramsey, by my father on his dying bed.""What hour? Hour of strongest right? strongest reason?""Not at all. The hour I've waited for was the one which would best enable me to meet your father on equal terms as measured by his own standards.""Oh, I see. I believe I see.""Yes, the hour when I should be not owner merely, but captain too, of the finest boat——""Dat eveh float'—" she tenderly put in."Yes, on this great river.""Oh, Captain Courteney——""Don't Courteney or captain me now, Ramsey, whether this is beginning or end." There was a silence, and then—"Hugh," she said, as softly as a female bird trying her mate's song, "you mustn't ask my father. You mustn't ask any one. I can't let you.""Your father's already asked. If he consents I go ashore at Natchez, having telegraphed ahead from Vicksburg——""You shan't. You shan't go to my brothers. You shan't go armed and you shan't go unarmed.""Yes, I shall. I'll go and settle with them in an hour without the least fear of violence on either side.""Armed with nothing but words? You shan't. And armed with anything else you shan't.""Ramsey, words are the mightiest weapon on earth. The world's one perfect man—we needn't be pious to say it—set about to conquer the human race by the sheer power of words and died rather than use any other weapon. Died victorious, as he counted victory. And the result—a poor, lame beginning of the result—is what we call Christendom.""You shan't die victorious for me.""No, I shall not. I talk much too vast.""Humph! you always did." She smiled, but a moonbeam betrayed a tear on her folded hands."True," he admitted. "I talk too vast. I'm only claiming the power of words in small as well as large. I've no hope of martyrdom; I'm only confident of victory.""No matter. Youwon'tgo ashore at Natchez.""You mean your father won't consent?""I do. There's one thing, at the very bottom of his heart, that you've never thought of.""I think I have.""What is it?""That as the Hayle boats are all one day to be yours, and our union would unite the two fleets under the one name of Courteney, he will never allow it.""He never will.""Ramsey, he says he may. If we and the boats are so united the fleet will be, while grandfather lives, the Courteney fleet; but each new boat from now on will be named for a Hayle, beginning with you, or your father, or your mother, as you and they may choose. At Vicksburg, if he consents in time, we can telegraph her—we must have her—to come aboard at Natchez for the rest of the trip. Grandfather, I suppose you've been told, is now waiting for us at Vicksburg. He came up on theAntelope.""TheAntelope! How do you know?""By a despatch received at Memphis.""Mmm! what a blessing is the telegraph! But, ah, Hugh"—the name was almost naturalized—"this is a mere castle in the air! My—my brothers——""I'll take care of them.""You can't! You can't! Oh, Hugh, they—keep—their—threats." She caught a breath and looked at him. If he went seeking them she would go at his side! He must have read her mind, for in his majestical way he smilingly shook his head.Mrs. Gilmore had ceased to sing and with the others had risen and turned Ramsey's way, confident that up there the conclusive word had been spoken. Ramsey called down:"Don't stop. Sing 'My Old Kentucky Home' or that thing in which 'the river keeps rolling along' and 'the future's but a dream.' We're song hungry up here.""Then sing to each other," was the reply. "You can do it.""Let Captain Hugh sing," said Watson. "He's off watch.""He says," said Ramsey, "captains don't sing on the texas roof." She moved to join the group on its way to an after stair. Watson bent his steps for the pilot-house. At the stair the actor's wife let her husband and "California" go down before her and as Ramsey and Hugh came close said covertly:"Sing, captain. Sing as softly as you please, just for us two while the world is in dreams and sleep, won't you?"The lover's heart was big with happiness, his solicitor had just been singing pointedly in his interest, the seclusion here was all but absolute, the quoted line was from Ramsey's song of that first night on theVotaress, and to the bright surprise of both his hearers he laid a touch on Mrs. Gilmore's arm and in a restrained voice so confidential as to reach only to the pilot-house above and to the two men at the stair's foot below began to sing.Before half a line was out the Californian had seized both of Gilmore's shoulders. "My poem!" he gasped. "I gave it to him last night to grammatize! He's fit it to a tchune. Partner, he's the only man that's listened——""Sh-sh-sh! listen yourself," whispered the actor, and this is what they heard:[Music: O come and grace my gar-den, From all the world a-part. Thou on-ly may'st the won-der see Of birds and flow'rs that in it be, For all of them are dreams of thee. My gar-den is my heart,... My gar-den is my heart.][Listen to a midi file of this music]"If heaven might make my gardenAn empire wide and great,Fidelity should close it in,The joy of life bloom evergreen,And love be law and thou be queen,Might I but keep the gate."For where would be my garden,Dear love, from thee apart?Whose every bush and bower and tree,Its founts, perfumes, and minstrelsyAnd all its flowers spring all from thee,Thou sunlight of my heart.""You say that's your poem?" murmured the actor."Oh, he's doctored it," stealthily admitted the Californian. "He's doctored it a lot."
Between that great eastward bend nearly opposite the mouth of the Arkansas, which in later years was cut off and is now, or was yesterday, Beulah Lake—between it and Ozark Island below—a white-jacket came up from the passenger deck far enough to show his head to the watchman above and warily asked a question.
"Six," was the reply. "Including me—seven."
The inquirer ran wildly down again, but theEnchantresssped on through the glorious moonlight as though he scarcely mattered. On the texas roof Mrs. Gilmore sat with "California," her husband with Watson, Hugh with Ramsey. But only the last two were out on its forward verge. Mrs. Gilmore had found it cool there and with the others had drawn back a few steps, into the pleasant warmth of the chimneys. For average passengers the evening was far gone, but not for players, pilots, Californians, or lovers—of the river.
A mile or so farther on, the white-jacket reappeared and, gliding by all others to reach his captain, said, with mincing feet and a semicircular bow, while presenting a tray of six, not seven, sherry cobblers:
"Sev'l gen'lemen's comp'ments, an' ax, will Mis' Gil'——"
"What gentlemen? Who?"
"Sev'l gen'lemen, yassuh. Dey tell me dess say, sev'l gen'lemen. Sev'l gen'lemen ax will Mis' Gilmo' have de kin'ness fo' to sing some o' dem same songs she sing night afo' las' in de ladies' cabin an' las' night up hyuh.... Yass'm, whiles dey listens f'om de b'ileh deck."
"Has my father gone to bed?" asked Ramsey.
"No'm, he up yit. He done met up wid dese sev'l gen'lemen an' find dey old frien's—callin' deyse'v's in joke Gideon' Ban'—an' he talkin' steamboats wid 'em——"
The speaker tittered as Ramsey inquiringly extended her arms out forward and crossed her wrists. "Yass'm," he said, "hin' feet on de front rail, yass'm."
It seemed but fair that Mrs. Gilmore, to meet the compliment generously, should sing at the very front of the hurricane roof, just over the forward guards of the boiler deck. But Ramsey and Hugh kept their place. Ramsey wanted to be near the sky, she explained, when songs were sung on the water by moonlight, and eagerly spoke for two or three which her friend had sung of old on theVotaressto spiritualize the "acrobatics" of the Brothers Ambrosia.
The singer's voice was rich, trained, and mature, and her repertory a survival of young days—nights—before curtains and between acts: Burns, Moore, Byron, and Mrs. Norton, alternating with "The Lavender Girl," "Rose of Lucerne," "Dandy Jim o' Caroline," and "O Poor Lucy Neal." And now she sang her best, in the belief that while she sang the pair up between her and the pilot-house were speaking conclusively. Let us see.
"Ramsey," said Hugh, and waited—ten seconds—twenty.
Well, why should he not? In eight years and a half there were ten million times twenty seconds and she had waited all of them. At length she responded and the moment she did so she thought she had spoken too promptly although all she said was, "Yes?"
"The hour's come at last," said Hugh.
"What hour?—hour to name that boat?"
"Yes, to name that boat. Only not that first. Ramsey, I've told your father all I ever wanted to tell you."
"Humph!" The response was so nearly in the manner of the earlier Ramsey, "the Ramsey he had begun with" and whom she remembered with horror, that she recognized the likeness. The further reply had been on her tongue's end, that to tell her father only that could not have taken long, or some such parrying nonsense; but now it would not come. She felt her whole nature tempted to make love's final approach steep and slippery, but again without looking she saw his face; his face of stone; his iron face with its large, quiet, formidable eyes that could burn with enterprise in great moments; a face set to all the world's realities, and eyes that offered them odds, asking none. So seeing she knew that if she answered with one least note of banter she would make herself an object of his magnanimity, than which she would almost rather fall under his scorn—if he ever stooped to scorn. Suddenly she remembered the deadlock and was smitten with the conviction that these exchanges were love's last farewell. Now it was hard to speak at all.
"What was it you told him?"
"I told him how long I'd loved you, and why."
"We both love the river so," murmured Ramsey in a voice broken by the pounding of her heart.
"Yes. I told him that, for one thing. And I told him how gladly I would have asked for you long ago had I not seen myself, as you so often saw me on theVotaress——"
"Condemned to inaction," she softly prompted; for if this was farewell a true maiden must speed the parting.
"Yes."
"By an absolute deadlock," she murmured on. "My father sees it. He knows it's one yet and must always be one."
"No, a lock but not a deadlock. It's a lock to which your brothers do not hold the key."
The pounding in her breast, which had grown better, grew worse again. "Who holds it?"
"Your father. I have just told him so. At no time would I have hesitated to ask for you if the key had been with your brothers. I would have got a settlement from them, sink or swim, alive or dead. I believe in lover's rights, Ramsey, and I'll have a lover's rights at any risk or cost that falls only on me. Those old threats—yes, I know how fiercely they are still meant—and they have always had their weight; but they've never of themselves weighed enough to stop me. I've held off and endured, waiting not for a change of heart in your brothers, but for an hour counselled, Ramsey, by my father on his dying bed."
"What hour? Hour of strongest right? strongest reason?"
"Not at all. The hour I've waited for was the one which would best enable me to meet your father on equal terms as measured by his own standards."
"Oh, I see. I believe I see."
"Yes, the hour when I should be not owner merely, but captain too, of the finest boat——"
"Dat eveh float'—" she tenderly put in.
"Yes, on this great river."
"Oh, Captain Courteney——"
"Don't Courteney or captain me now, Ramsey, whether this is beginning or end." There was a silence, and then—
"Hugh," she said, as softly as a female bird trying her mate's song, "you mustn't ask my father. You mustn't ask any one. I can't let you."
"Your father's already asked. If he consents I go ashore at Natchez, having telegraphed ahead from Vicksburg——"
"You shan't. You shan't go to my brothers. You shan't go armed and you shan't go unarmed."
"Yes, I shall. I'll go and settle with them in an hour without the least fear of violence on either side."
"Armed with nothing but words? You shan't. And armed with anything else you shan't."
"Ramsey, words are the mightiest weapon on earth. The world's one perfect man—we needn't be pious to say it—set about to conquer the human race by the sheer power of words and died rather than use any other weapon. Died victorious, as he counted victory. And the result—a poor, lame beginning of the result—is what we call Christendom."
"You shan't die victorious for me."
"No, I shall not. I talk much too vast."
"Humph! you always did." She smiled, but a moonbeam betrayed a tear on her folded hands.
"True," he admitted. "I talk too vast. I'm only claiming the power of words in small as well as large. I've no hope of martyrdom; I'm only confident of victory."
"No matter. Youwon'tgo ashore at Natchez."
"You mean your father won't consent?"
"I do. There's one thing, at the very bottom of his heart, that you've never thought of."
"I think I have."
"What is it?"
"That as the Hayle boats are all one day to be yours, and our union would unite the two fleets under the one name of Courteney, he will never allow it."
"He never will."
"Ramsey, he says he may. If we and the boats are so united the fleet will be, while grandfather lives, the Courteney fleet; but each new boat from now on will be named for a Hayle, beginning with you, or your father, or your mother, as you and they may choose. At Vicksburg, if he consents in time, we can telegraph her—we must have her—to come aboard at Natchez for the rest of the trip. Grandfather, I suppose you've been told, is now waiting for us at Vicksburg. He came up on theAntelope."
"TheAntelope! How do you know?"
"By a despatch received at Memphis."
"Mmm! what a blessing is the telegraph! But, ah, Hugh"—the name was almost naturalized—"this is a mere castle in the air! My—my brothers——"
"I'll take care of them."
"You can't! You can't! Oh, Hugh, they—keep—their—threats." She caught a breath and looked at him. If he went seeking them she would go at his side! He must have read her mind, for in his majestical way he smilingly shook his head.
Mrs. Gilmore had ceased to sing and with the others had risen and turned Ramsey's way, confident that up there the conclusive word had been spoken. Ramsey called down:
"Don't stop. Sing 'My Old Kentucky Home' or that thing in which 'the river keeps rolling along' and 'the future's but a dream.' We're song hungry up here."
"Then sing to each other," was the reply. "You can do it."
"Let Captain Hugh sing," said Watson. "He's off watch."
"He says," said Ramsey, "captains don't sing on the texas roof." She moved to join the group on its way to an after stair. Watson bent his steps for the pilot-house. At the stair the actor's wife let her husband and "California" go down before her and as Ramsey and Hugh came close said covertly:
"Sing, captain. Sing as softly as you please, just for us two while the world is in dreams and sleep, won't you?"
The lover's heart was big with happiness, his solicitor had just been singing pointedly in his interest, the seclusion here was all but absolute, the quoted line was from Ramsey's song of that first night on theVotaress, and to the bright surprise of both his hearers he laid a touch on Mrs. Gilmore's arm and in a restrained voice so confidential as to reach only to the pilot-house above and to the two men at the stair's foot below began to sing.
Before half a line was out the Californian had seized both of Gilmore's shoulders. "My poem!" he gasped. "I gave it to him last night to grammatize! He's fit it to a tchune. Partner, he's the only man that's listened——"
"Sh-sh-sh! listen yourself," whispered the actor, and this is what they heard:
[Listen to a midi file of this music]
"If heaven might make my gardenAn empire wide and great,Fidelity should close it in,The joy of life bloom evergreen,And love be law and thou be queen,Might I but keep the gate."For where would be my garden,Dear love, from thee apart?Whose every bush and bower and tree,Its founts, perfumes, and minstrelsyAnd all its flowers spring all from thee,Thou sunlight of my heart."
"If heaven might make my gardenAn empire wide and great,Fidelity should close it in,The joy of life bloom evergreen,And love be law and thou be queen,Might I but keep the gate.
"If heaven might make my garden
An empire wide and great,
Fidelity should close it in,
The joy of life bloom evergreen,
And love be law and thou be queen,
Might I but keep the gate.
"For where would be my garden,Dear love, from thee apart?Whose every bush and bower and tree,Its founts, perfumes, and minstrelsyAnd all its flowers spring all from thee,Thou sunlight of my heart."
"For where would be my garden,
Dear love, from thee apart?
Whose every bush and bower and tree,
Its founts, perfumes, and minstrelsy
And all its flowers spring all from thee,
Thou sunlight of my heart."
"You say that's your poem?" murmured the actor.
"Oh, he's doctored it," stealthily admitted the Californian. "He's doctored it a lot."
LXIWANTED, HAYLE'S TWINS
Early in the next forenoon another of the Californian's benevolent schemes threatened to miscarry.At the settlement of Milliken's Bend there were people already at the landing, and people running to it from three directions. Yet not a hat, hand, or handkerchief did they wave until theEnchantress, in full view up toward the head of the bend, was too near to mistake their salutes for a sign to stop. Then there were wavings aplenty and cries of acclaim. By the "River News" daily telegraphed down to the New Orleans, Vicksburg, and other papers, from Louisville, Paducah, Cairo, and like points, and brought up in those papers by such boats as theAntelope, it had been known here and at every important landing below that this latest bride of the river was coming and the time of her appearance had been definitely calculated. And now behold her, a vision of delight, a winged victory, the finest apparition yet. Up in front of her bell could be seen Captain Hugh, and who was that beside him, twice his bulk, but Gideon Hayle!"Well, well, what's going to happen next?"No one offered an answer, though the question echoed round.So early in the season the new wonder carried no cotton, but her lower deck showed "right smart o' freight," and wherever passengers were wont to stand stood a crowd looking so content that on the shore one lean and hungry native with his hands in his trousers to the elbows drawled sourly as his eye singled out the boiler-deck throng:"Kin see thah breakfast inside 'em f'om hyuh."Now they read her name in gold on the front of her pilot-house, now on its side and splendidly magnified on her wheel-house, and lastly again on the pilot-house, at its back, as she dwindled away eastward for Island One-hundred-and-three, called by Ramsey and Watson "My Wife's," and now known as Pawpaw Island."California" was a general disappointed of his reinforcements. The pair at Milliken's Bend having failed him, what better hope was there of the Carthaginians or even of the Vicksburg couple? Yet at Vicksburg, two hours later, he had joy. For down at the wharf-boat's very edge, liveliest of all wavers and applauders, with a "Howdy, Cap'm Hugh?" before the lines were out, and a "How you do, Miss Ramsey?" were the three pairs at once, foregathered here, they said, "to make the spree mo' spree-cious," and wild to be the first on the "sta-age plank." Close after them came Commodore Courteney, and Vicksburg faded into the north."Why, Mis' Gilmo'!" said the three pretty wives, sinking with a deft sweep of their flounced crinoline upon the blue-damask sofas and faintly teetering on their perfect springs, "why, my deah la-ady, yo' eight an' a hafe yeahs youngeh!— Ain't she?— She certain'y is! An' that deah Commodo' Co'teney! He's as sweet as eveh!"But you, Miss Ramsey, oh,—well,—why,—you know,—time an' again we heard what a mahvel you'd grown to be, but—why,—lemme look at you again! Why, yo' just divi-i-ine! Law'! I'd give a thousand dollahs just fo' yo' red-gole hair. Why, it's the golden locks o' Veronese, that Cap'm Hugh's fatheh showed you,—don't you remembeh?—on theVot'ress, an' you showed us,—in the sky. They there yet!"An'"—the five heads drew close together—"Cap'm Hugh, oh, he ain't such a su'pri-ise; we've seen him f'om time to time. But ain't he—mmm, hmm, hmmm! An'so a-a-able! Why, Miss Ramsey,—oh, you must 'a' heard it,—they say excep' fo' yo' pa he hasn't got his equal on the riveh an' could 'a' been a captain long ago had he 'a' thought best himself. He certain'y could. But ain't this boat the splendidest thing in the wi-i-ide, wi-i-ide world? It certain'y is! It's a miracle! an' he her captain and deservin' to be!"Mis' Gilmo',—Miss Ramsey,"—the lovely heads came together,—"the's a hund'ed pretty girls—an' rich as pretty—that ah just cra-a-azy about him. But they might as well be crazy about a stah. They certain'y might, an' they—know—why!" (Laughter.) "They certain'y do— Law'! ain't Miss Ramsey got the sa-a-ame o-o-ole la-a-afe, on'y sweeteh'n eveh? Sweeteh an' mo' ketchin'! You certain'y have. No wondeh yo' call' the Belle o' the Bends. But, all the same, yo' cruel. Yo' fame' fo' yo' cruelty!" (Laughter.) "They say he's just telegrayphed yo' ma to come aboa'd at Natchez. That's just ow Southe'n hospitality. But won't that be fi-i-ine? It certain'y will!"The three husbands came bringing the actor, the junior pilot, the Californian, and his confidant of the evening before. Incited by Ramsey the wives fell into queries on the coming election, rejoicing that even should Lincoln be made President, and that incredible thing, a war, come on, the great river and its cities—New Orleans, Natchez, Memphis, and especially Vicksburg—would be far from the storm. While they made merry Mrs. Gilmore got Ramsey aside."If Captain Hugh's telegraphed, why, then, your father——""Oh! my father, he's roaming over the boat somewhere with Commodore Courteney! I'm going to change this hot dress for a cooler one. I'll be back before a great while.""Let me go with you. Are you not well?"Not well! The girl laughed gayly. But as she drew her friend out upon the guards and to her stateroom's rear door she talked with a soft earnestness all the way."I don't see how I could have been so blind! Ifhesaw those things why couldn't I see them? I thought of them, over and over; but always the other things crowded them back into the dark—and there was plenty of dark. He's right, my father does hold the key, and if I'd seen things as I see them now I'd have made the twins give in, somehow, long ago. If you should see mammy Joy, or Phyllis, or both, please send them to me."She shut herself in, dropped to the berth's side, and let the tears run wild. The nurse and the still handsome Phyllis appeared promptly, together. But they found her full of sparkle; so full that Phyllis saw under the mask; a mask she herself had worn so often in her youth under a like desperation."Mammy," said her mistress, "want to go somewhere with your baby, about sundown this evening?"For explanation the old woman glanced at Phyllis, but Phyllis's eyes were on Ramsey with a light whose burning carried old Joy's memory back twenty years. "Sundown?" echoed the nurse to gain time, "yass'm, o' co'se, ef—but, missie—sundown—dat mean' Natchez. You cayn't be goin' asho' whah Cap'm Hugh dess tell Phyllis yo' ma comin' aboa'd?""Not ashore to stay," was the blithe reply as Phyllis aided the change of dress. "There'll be two or three of us.""Well, o' co'se, ef you needs me. Wha' fo' you gwine?""To see the twins," sang Ramsey, "if we go at all."Then Phyllis knew she was trusted, and while with a puzzled frown the nurse watched her manipulate hooks and eyes she blandly asked: "Miss Ramsey, if Cap'm Hugh give' me leave kin I go too?""Yes, you might ask him. Nobody's going unless he goes."The light came to old Joy. "Law'! missie, now you a-talkin'! Now you a-talkin' wisdom! Dah's whah I's wid you, my baby. I's wid you right dah, pra-a-aise Gawd!"All three, parting company, were happier for several hours. But the Californian's were not the only fond schemes, aboard theEnchantress, that could go to wreck.Nor had "California" met his last disappointment even on this journey. As he and his reinforcements came out on the boiler deck with a hundred others from the midday feast the deck-hands below, for quicker unloading at Canal Street on the morrow, were shifting a lot of sacked corn from the hold to the forecastle-deck and were timing their work to a chantey. The song was innocently chosen in reference solely to the piece of river in which they chanced then to be, but all the more for its innocence it touched in that gentle knight a chord of sympathy."My own true love wuz lost an' found—O hahd times!—An' lost ag'in a-comin' roundHahd Times Ben'.Found an' lost, lost an' found,An' lost ag'in a-comin' roundHahd Times Ben'."[2]So it ran, while theEnchantressturned southeast with that Lake Saint Joe of which "'Lindy" was "the pride" lying forest-hidden a few miles away on the starboard beam. The melody opened with a prolonged wail on its highest note and bore the tragic quality which so often marked the songs of slavery. Helped on by names of near-by landmarks—the Big Black River and the once perilous Grand Gulf—at the bottom of Hard Times Bend—it played on "California's" mind like summer lightning and seemed to call to his romantic spirit supernaturally. He could delay no longer to take his companions into his confidence.By guess, he said, by inferences, and by modest inquiries he had discerned that Hugh was going ashore at Natchez to—they understood. All right, he would go, too, and ordinarily he would be enough. But the present need was not a fair fight but peace. Hence the propriety of overwhelming numbers. Wouldn't they like to take a hand?"But he'll see the twins privately," said the invited."Of course, but 'though lost to sight' they'll know we're too close for them to get away from, and that's a very convincing situation to 'most any man, even twins.""Yes, but we can't turn a feud into a fox-hunt. You don't know these things as we do.""Don't? Why, my friends, I'm a Kentucky highlander. Might as well say I don't know the smell of whiskey because I keep sober, when, in my day, I've been so drunk I've laid on my back and felt up'ards for the ground."However, he yielded sweetly. But it was plain to see that he would certainly, contentedly, go with Hugh alone. Indeed, only this would he have preferred—that Gideon Hayle might go instead. But one square look at the big, grim, baffled commander had told him earlier that Hugh's perilous isolation was wholly acceptable as a final test of his fitness to belong to Gideon's Band. He parted with his companions and stood at the front rail taking comfort in the thought that whoever might disappoint him the twins would not and looking down on the toiling singers in placid defiance of their lines:"My true love's heart to mine 'uz boun'—O hahd times!—Dey broke dem bindin's comin' roun'Hahd Times Ben'.Boun' an' broke, broke an' boun',An' broke ag'in a-comin' roun'Hahd Times Ben'."Watson's partner touched the listener's arm, who smiled and said:"Only four hours more.""That's all," replied the pilot. "But I've just thought of something. Suppose the twins shouldn't be in Natchez."[Footnote 2:[Music notation]][Listen to a midi file of this music]
Early in the next forenoon another of the Californian's benevolent schemes threatened to miscarry.
At the settlement of Milliken's Bend there were people already at the landing, and people running to it from three directions. Yet not a hat, hand, or handkerchief did they wave until theEnchantress, in full view up toward the head of the bend, was too near to mistake their salutes for a sign to stop. Then there were wavings aplenty and cries of acclaim. By the "River News" daily telegraphed down to the New Orleans, Vicksburg, and other papers, from Louisville, Paducah, Cairo, and like points, and brought up in those papers by such boats as theAntelope, it had been known here and at every important landing below that this latest bride of the river was coming and the time of her appearance had been definitely calculated. And now behold her, a vision of delight, a winged victory, the finest apparition yet. Up in front of her bell could be seen Captain Hugh, and who was that beside him, twice his bulk, but Gideon Hayle!
"Well, well, what's going to happen next?"
No one offered an answer, though the question echoed round.
So early in the season the new wonder carried no cotton, but her lower deck showed "right smart o' freight," and wherever passengers were wont to stand stood a crowd looking so content that on the shore one lean and hungry native with his hands in his trousers to the elbows drawled sourly as his eye singled out the boiler-deck throng:
"Kin see thah breakfast inside 'em f'om hyuh."
Now they read her name in gold on the front of her pilot-house, now on its side and splendidly magnified on her wheel-house, and lastly again on the pilot-house, at its back, as she dwindled away eastward for Island One-hundred-and-three, called by Ramsey and Watson "My Wife's," and now known as Pawpaw Island.
"California" was a general disappointed of his reinforcements. The pair at Milliken's Bend having failed him, what better hope was there of the Carthaginians or even of the Vicksburg couple? Yet at Vicksburg, two hours later, he had joy. For down at the wharf-boat's very edge, liveliest of all wavers and applauders, with a "Howdy, Cap'm Hugh?" before the lines were out, and a "How you do, Miss Ramsey?" were the three pairs at once, foregathered here, they said, "to make the spree mo' spree-cious," and wild to be the first on the "sta-age plank." Close after them came Commodore Courteney, and Vicksburg faded into the north.
"Why, Mis' Gilmo'!" said the three pretty wives, sinking with a deft sweep of their flounced crinoline upon the blue-damask sofas and faintly teetering on their perfect springs, "why, my deah la-ady, yo' eight an' a hafe yeahs youngeh!— Ain't she?— She certain'y is! An' that deah Commodo' Co'teney! He's as sweet as eveh!
"But you, Miss Ramsey, oh,—well,—why,—you know,—time an' again we heard what a mahvel you'd grown to be, but—why,—lemme look at you again! Why, yo' just divi-i-ine! Law'! I'd give a thousand dollahs just fo' yo' red-gole hair. Why, it's the golden locks o' Veronese, that Cap'm Hugh's fatheh showed you,—don't you remembeh?—on theVot'ress, an' you showed us,—in the sky. They there yet!
"An'"—the five heads drew close together—"Cap'm Hugh, oh, he ain't such a su'pri-ise; we've seen him f'om time to time. But ain't he—mmm, hmm, hmmm! An'so a-a-able! Why, Miss Ramsey,—oh, you must 'a' heard it,—they say excep' fo' yo' pa he hasn't got his equal on the riveh an' could 'a' been a captain long ago had he 'a' thought best himself. He certain'y could. But ain't this boat the splendidest thing in the wi-i-ide, wi-i-ide world? It certain'y is! It's a miracle! an' he her captain and deservin' to be!
"Mis' Gilmo',—Miss Ramsey,"—the lovely heads came together,—"the's a hund'ed pretty girls—an' rich as pretty—that ah just cra-a-azy about him. But they might as well be crazy about a stah. They certain'y might, an' they—know—why!" (Laughter.) "They certain'y do— Law'! ain't Miss Ramsey got the sa-a-ame o-o-ole la-a-afe, on'y sweeteh'n eveh? Sweeteh an' mo' ketchin'! You certain'y have. No wondeh yo' call' the Belle o' the Bends. But, all the same, yo' cruel. Yo' fame' fo' yo' cruelty!" (Laughter.) "They say he's just telegrayphed yo' ma to come aboa'd at Natchez. That's just ow Southe'n hospitality. But won't that be fi-i-ine? It certain'y will!"
The three husbands came bringing the actor, the junior pilot, the Californian, and his confidant of the evening before. Incited by Ramsey the wives fell into queries on the coming election, rejoicing that even should Lincoln be made President, and that incredible thing, a war, come on, the great river and its cities—New Orleans, Natchez, Memphis, and especially Vicksburg—would be far from the storm. While they made merry Mrs. Gilmore got Ramsey aside.
"If Captain Hugh's telegraphed, why, then, your father——"
"Oh! my father, he's roaming over the boat somewhere with Commodore Courteney! I'm going to change this hot dress for a cooler one. I'll be back before a great while."
"Let me go with you. Are you not well?"
Not well! The girl laughed gayly. But as she drew her friend out upon the guards and to her stateroom's rear door she talked with a soft earnestness all the way.
"I don't see how I could have been so blind! Ifhesaw those things why couldn't I see them? I thought of them, over and over; but always the other things crowded them back into the dark—and there was plenty of dark. He's right, my father does hold the key, and if I'd seen things as I see them now I'd have made the twins give in, somehow, long ago. If you should see mammy Joy, or Phyllis, or both, please send them to me."
She shut herself in, dropped to the berth's side, and let the tears run wild. The nurse and the still handsome Phyllis appeared promptly, together. But they found her full of sparkle; so full that Phyllis saw under the mask; a mask she herself had worn so often in her youth under a like desperation.
"Mammy," said her mistress, "want to go somewhere with your baby, about sundown this evening?"
For explanation the old woman glanced at Phyllis, but Phyllis's eyes were on Ramsey with a light whose burning carried old Joy's memory back twenty years. "Sundown?" echoed the nurse to gain time, "yass'm, o' co'se, ef—but, missie—sundown—dat mean' Natchez. You cayn't be goin' asho' whah Cap'm Hugh dess tell Phyllis yo' ma comin' aboa'd?"
"Not ashore to stay," was the blithe reply as Phyllis aided the change of dress. "There'll be two or three of us."
"Well, o' co'se, ef you needs me. Wha' fo' you gwine?"
"To see the twins," sang Ramsey, "if we go at all."
Then Phyllis knew she was trusted, and while with a puzzled frown the nurse watched her manipulate hooks and eyes she blandly asked: "Miss Ramsey, if Cap'm Hugh give' me leave kin I go too?"
"Yes, you might ask him. Nobody's going unless he goes."
The light came to old Joy. "Law'! missie, now you a-talkin'! Now you a-talkin' wisdom! Dah's whah I's wid you, my baby. I's wid you right dah, pra-a-aise Gawd!"
All three, parting company, were happier for several hours. But the Californian's were not the only fond schemes, aboard theEnchantress, that could go to wreck.
Nor had "California" met his last disappointment even on this journey. As he and his reinforcements came out on the boiler deck with a hundred others from the midday feast the deck-hands below, for quicker unloading at Canal Street on the morrow, were shifting a lot of sacked corn from the hold to the forecastle-deck and were timing their work to a chantey. The song was innocently chosen in reference solely to the piece of river in which they chanced then to be, but all the more for its innocence it touched in that gentle knight a chord of sympathy.
"My own true love wuz lost an' found—O hahd times!—An' lost ag'in a-comin' roundHahd Times Ben'.Found an' lost, lost an' found,An' lost ag'in a-comin' roundHahd Times Ben'."[2]
"My own true love wuz lost an' found—O hahd times!—An' lost ag'in a-comin' roundHahd Times Ben'.Found an' lost, lost an' found,An' lost ag'in a-comin' roundHahd Times Ben'."[2]
"My own true love wuz lost an' found—
O hahd times!—
An' lost ag'in a-comin' round
Hahd Times Ben'.
Found an' lost, lost an' found,
An' lost ag'in a-comin' round
Hahd Times Ben'."[2]
So it ran, while theEnchantressturned southeast with that Lake Saint Joe of which "'Lindy" was "the pride" lying forest-hidden a few miles away on the starboard beam. The melody opened with a prolonged wail on its highest note and bore the tragic quality which so often marked the songs of slavery. Helped on by names of near-by landmarks—the Big Black River and the once perilous Grand Gulf—at the bottom of Hard Times Bend—it played on "California's" mind like summer lightning and seemed to call to his romantic spirit supernaturally. He could delay no longer to take his companions into his confidence.
By guess, he said, by inferences, and by modest inquiries he had discerned that Hugh was going ashore at Natchez to—they understood. All right, he would go, too, and ordinarily he would be enough. But the present need was not a fair fight but peace. Hence the propriety of overwhelming numbers. Wouldn't they like to take a hand?
"But he'll see the twins privately," said the invited.
"Of course, but 'though lost to sight' they'll know we're too close for them to get away from, and that's a very convincing situation to 'most any man, even twins."
"Yes, but we can't turn a feud into a fox-hunt. You don't know these things as we do."
"Don't? Why, my friends, I'm a Kentucky highlander. Might as well say I don't know the smell of whiskey because I keep sober, when, in my day, I've been so drunk I've laid on my back and felt up'ards for the ground."
However, he yielded sweetly. But it was plain to see that he would certainly, contentedly, go with Hugh alone. Indeed, only this would he have preferred—that Gideon Hayle might go instead. But one square look at the big, grim, baffled commander had told him earlier that Hugh's perilous isolation was wholly acceptable as a final test of his fitness to belong to Gideon's Band. He parted with his companions and stood at the front rail taking comfort in the thought that whoever might disappoint him the twins would not and looking down on the toiling singers in placid defiance of their lines:
"My true love's heart to mine 'uz boun'—O hahd times!—Dey broke dem bindin's comin' roun'Hahd Times Ben'.Boun' an' broke, broke an' boun',An' broke ag'in a-comin' roun'Hahd Times Ben'."
"My true love's heart to mine 'uz boun'—O hahd times!—Dey broke dem bindin's comin' roun'Hahd Times Ben'.Boun' an' broke, broke an' boun',An' broke ag'in a-comin' roun'Hahd Times Ben'."
"My true love's heart to mine 'uz boun'—
O hahd times!—
Dey broke dem bindin's comin' roun'
Hahd Times Ben'.
Boun' an' broke, broke an' boun',
An' broke ag'in a-comin' roun'
Hahd Times Ben'."
Watson's partner touched the listener's arm, who smiled and said:
"Only four hours more."
"That's all," replied the pilot. "But I've just thought of something. Suppose the twins shouldn't be in Natchez."
[Footnote 2:[Music notation]]
[Listen to a midi file of this music]
LXIIEUTHANASIA
A few steps aside from Hugh and his grandfather at the forward rail of the hurricane roof, in a glow of autumn twilight, the Gilmores and the three couples taken on at Vicksburg observed theEnchantress, under Watson's skill, lay her lower guards against the guards of the Natchez wharf-boat with a touch as light as a human hand.Down on the wharf-boat, in its double door, as beautiful in her fuller years as inVotaressdays, and more radiant, stood Madame Hayle. A man-servant at one elbow, a maid at the other, saw the group on the roof fondly bidding for her smiles, but except one sent earlier to the two Courteneys they were all for her husband and daughter, who, unseen from above, awaited her half-way down the main forward stairs. When the maid, however, leaned to her and spoke, her glance went aloft and her gestures were a joy even to the strangers who crowded the boat's side. Now while the stage was run out and her husband met her and gave her his arm, and white-jackets seized her effects, the man-servant answered a question softly called over to him by Ramsey, and the group overhead caught his words:"De twins couldn' come. No, miss, 'caze dey ain't in town. No, miss, dey bofe went oveh to de Lou'siana place 'istiddy.... Yass, miss, on a bah hunt in Bayou Crocodile swamp."Mrs. Gilmore stole a glance at Hugh, but the only sign that he had heard was a light nod to the mate below, and a like one up to Watson."Take in that stage," called the mate to his men. The engine bells jingled, theEnchantressbacked a moment on one wheel, then went forward on both, fluttered her skirts of leaping foam, made a wide, upstream turn, headed down the river, and swept away for Natchez Island just below and for New Orleans distant a full night's run. She had hardly put the island on her larboard bow when merrily up and down the cabin and out on the boiler deck and thence down the passenger guards rang the supper bell."Bayou Crocodile," said a Carthaginian descending the wheel-house stair, "that's where one of the sons-in-law has his plantation, isn't it?""On the Black River, yes," said he of Milliken's Bend."Near where it comes into Red River," added Vicksburg.Once more Hugh and Ramsey sat alone side by side under a glorious night sky, at that view-point so rarely chosen by others but so favored by her—the front of the texas roof. Down forward at the captain's station sat the two commodores and up in the pilot-house were the two pilots, the Gilmores, "California," Madame Hayle, and they of Vicksburg and the Bends.In the moral atmosphere of this uppermost group there was a new and happy clearness easily attributable to a single potent cause—Madame Hayle. Her advent and the moon's rising had come in the same hour and with very similar effect. Every one was aware for himself, though nobody could say when any one else had been told, that while Gideon's decision was still withheld, madame, in her own sweet, absolute way, had said it would be forthcoming before the boat touched the Canal Street wharf, and that in the interval, whether Hugh and Ramsey were never to sit side by side again, or were to go side by side the rest of their days, they should have this hour this way and were free to lengthen it out till night was gone, if they wished.It was not late in any modern sense, yet on the passenger deck no one was up but the barkeeper, two or three quartets at cards, the second clerk at work on his freight list, a white-jacket or two on watch, and Joy and Phyllis. Thus assured of seclusion the lovers communed without haste. There had been hurried questions but Hugh had answered them and Ramsey was now passive, partly in the bliss of being at his side as she had never been before and partly in a despair growing out of his confessed purpose to leave theEnchantressat Red River Landing. The grandfather had already assumed Hugh's place and cares aboard, and it was Hugh's design to make his way, by boat or horse, up to and along Black River in search of the twins.To allay this distress Hugh's soft deep voice said:"Suppose you were a soldier's wife. This is little to that. This is but once for all.""Yes," murmured Ramsey, "but I'd have one advantage.""That you'd be his wife?""Yes," whispered Ramsey, who could not venture the name itself, for the pure rapture of it."Why, you're going to be mine. As the song says: 'I will come again, my love, though a' the seas gang dry.'""Hugh, didn't you once say I didn't know what fear was?""I certainly thought it.""Well, now I do know."He made no reply and she sat thinking of his errand. If he should find her brothers he would meet them in the deepest wilderness. Only slaves, who could not testify against masters, would be with them, their loaded guns would be in their hands, and their blood would be heated with—She resorted again to questions in her odd cross-examining way."You say you think there's going to be a war?""I fear so.""Humph! fear. If there should be will you fight?""Certainly.""Humph! certainly. I should think—you'd hate to fight.""I'd fight all the more furiously on that account.""Humph!... On which side?""Ramsey, I don't know. Idon't knowtill the time comes.""Then how do you know you won't fight my brothers—now?""I shan't be armed.""But if in an outburst you should snatch up some weapon?""I don't burst out. I don't snatch up.""Humph! Wish I didn't."They were rounding Point Breeze. The long reach from Fort Adams down to Red River Landing lay before them. "Hugh, did you ever have a presentiment? Of course not. I never did before. I got it a-comin' round Hard Times Bend.""Then I can cure it—with a new verse, one our poet has made and given me. It shall be our parting word. Shall I?""Oh, yes, but not for parting! I don't want any parting!"He spoke it softly:"I dreamp I heard a joyful soun'—O hahd times!—Love once mo' foun' de last turn roun'Hahd Times Ben'.Los' an' foun', broke an' boun',Love foun' an' boun' de last turn roun'Hahd Times Ben'."Ramsey barely waited for its end. "What's that light waving far away down yonder? It began as you did.""It didn't know it. It's only some one on the Red River wharf-boat, wanting us to land," said Hugh, and before his last word came theEnchantressroared her assent to the signal. But Ramsey had spoken again:"What's this, right here?" She sprang up and gazed out on the water a scant mile ahead. There, directly in the steamer's course and just out of the moon's track, another faint light waved, so close to the water as to be reflected in it. The moment the whistle broke out it ceased to swing and when the whistle ceased the engines had stopped."What is it?" she asked again as Hugh stood by her looking out ahead with eyes better trained to night use than hers."A skiff," he replied, "with some message."She could see only that Watson had put the light on their starboard bow. It seemed to drift toward them but she knew that the movement was the steamer's, and now the light was so close as to show the negro who held it. He stood poised to throw aboard a billet of wood with a note attached. And now he cast it. The lower guards were out of Ramsey's line of sight but a cry of disappointment told her the stick had fallen short and would be lost under the great wheel, which at that moment, with its fellow, "went ahead." But as theEnchantresspassed the skiff its occupant called out a hurried statement to the mate, on the forecastle, and as the skiff and its light swept astern the mate repeated the word to the commodores."Man at Red River Landing accidentally shot. Must be got to the city quick or he can't live."The commodores, and then the lovers, resumed their seats."Poor man," murmured Ramsey, "poor man! he's gothistrouble without going in chase of it.""If he'd gone in chase of it," rejoined Hugh, "he might never have met it."TheEnchantressswung more directly toward the dim lights of the wharf-boat and at top speed ruffled through a freshening air with the goal but a few miles away. Yet the lovers sat silent. Once parted they would think of many a word they should have spoken while they could, but now none seemed large enough to break such silence with. To be silent and best content with silence was one of the most special and blissful of lovers' rights.Presently a glow rose from the forecastle, reddening the white jack-staff up to its black night-hawk. The torch baskets were being lighted. Hugh stirred to go but Ramsey laid her touch on his wrist and he stayed.She spoke. "Mustn't you wait near your grandfather till you see who it is that's coming aboard?""I can. I may as well."TheEnchantress, in mid-river, began to "round to" in order to land bow up-stream. When she came round, the half dozen men on the wharf-boat were close at hand in the glare of her torches, eye to eye with those on the forecastle, but prevented by the light itself from seeing those on the upper decks.Ramsey sprang to her feet with lips apart to cry out to her mother up behind her, to Gideon down before, to Hugh at her side, but all these saw and knew. A face in the centre of the torchlight and of the wharf-boat group was Julian's bearing the mute intelligence that the writhing man on a rude stretcher borne by two negroes was his brother. The lovers parted without a word, but in a moment were near each other again as Hugh joined the commodores while Ramsey and her mother crouched at the roof's forward rail to see the wounded man brought across the stage."In my room!" pleaded madame to both Courteneys at once, and the elder assented as Hugh hurried below with the three Hayles following.It was heart-rending work getting the sufferer into the berth while he poured out moanings of agony mingled with frantic accusations of his bearers, railings against God and all his laws, and unspoken recognitions of mother and sister. Ramsey, seeing his eye fall on Phyllis and remain there staring, and knowing from old Joy that he had grown enough like his uncle Dan to have been his twin, suffered for her as well as him."Who areyou?" he cried, still staring. "Where am I?"The maid did not reply, but her unfaltering gaze met his as if it neither could nor would do otherwise. Ramsey intuitively followed the play of her mind. To look again on Gideon Hayle had already recalled emotions she had striven for half a lifetime to put away, and now they kept her eyes set on this tortured yet unrelenting advocate of all the wrongs from which those emotions sprang.He looked to his mother. "Great God! mother, is this the new Courteney boat? Well, if this isn't hell's finishing touch! Jule! Where's Jule? Go, get me Jule!"Phyllis turned to go but—"No," he cried with a light of sudden purpose in his face, "you stay. Everybody else go! And send me Jule. Don't send a doctor, I'm the doctor myself. Get out, all of you, go! This isn't my death-bed. God! I wish it was, for I'm a cripple for life and will never walk again—leave! go! and send me Jule!"Guided by a cabin-boy to Hugh's room, Ramsey found Julian confronting his father, "California," and the Gilmores. Hugh had led them there for privacy and stood close at one side. Julian seemed to be suffering a shock scarcely less than his brother's though it made a wholly different outward show. His face wore an appalled look, his voice was below its accustomed pitch, and his words, words which could not have been premeditated, seemed studiously fit and precise."Fortunately," he had been saying before Ramsey appeared, "he never"—meaning his brother—"goes into the country without his drugs and instruments—we have them with us yet—and he could tell me what to do and I did it, or he would have died right there in the swamp.""But you don't say how the accursed thing happened," said Gideon as Ramsey entered hardly aware that she was pausing at Hugh's side. The brother turned and stared on the two."Come," said Gideon, "never mind that. How did it happen?""It happened, sir, through my own incredible carelessness and by my own hand.Don't say a word!I would to God I had been the victim and had fallen dead in my tracks. If I had killed him I would have put the other load into my brain.""Oh, if!" solemnly sneered the incredulous father. While he did so Julian, the profoundness of whose mental torture his father poorly saw, received from Ramsey his brother's summons and with her was turning away. He stopped and flashed back a look of agonized resentment, but Gideon met it with a beetling frown and neither gaze fell until Ramsey stepped between, facing the giant, and she and the brother backed away and were gone.They sought the passenger deck. Between anguish for Lucian's calamity and anguish for his father's contumely there poured from Julian's lips in hectoring questions to Ramsey a further anguish of chagrin for the seeming triumph of Hugh's love. Two or three challenges she parried and while in a single utterance he launched out as many more they encountered at a wheel-house stair their mother and old Joy. He cut short all inquiries with a proffer to return to them and Ramsey post-haste and give a full account of the disaster.Meantime down in the sick-room Lucian said to Phyllis, when they had been a few minutes alone:"And now give me my medicine.""Yes, sir; where is it?""Oh, damnation! in my saddle-bags on the washstand. What are you trying to talk white folks' English for?" He hardly spoke three words without a moan or an oath. "Do you find a measuring-glass?"She found it."See a small bottle—dark liquid—about twice the size—of the glass?""Yass, suh, but it's full, suh.""Hell! what of that? Fill the glass and give it to me!"She filled it but paused. "It—it looks like la'danum.""Oh, damn you, so did your great-grandmother. It's not laudanum. Did you ever smell vinegar in laudanum, or nutmeg? Give it here! God A'mighty, if I could reach you with my fist—Give me that glass!""Misteh Lucian, if this is la'danum——""You hell-fired idiot, it isn't! And if it was, such an overdose would only vomit me. Don't you know that?""Yass, suh, I know it would." But still she held back."Then give it here!"Julian came in with alarm added to his other distresses."Oh, Luce! do you want to start that bleeding again?""I'd just as lief as not! Make that wench give me that glass or mash her head! She knows if it was laudanum it would merely puke me. Damn it, it's a simple euthanasia." The crafty sufferer felt assured his brother would neither know nor ask the smooth word's meaning.Julian turned, savagely upon the maid. Heated with drink, enraged at himself, his father, Hugh Courteney, his sister, and his mother, he was in no mood to humor the contumacy of any freed slave and least of all this one. "Give it to him this instant," he cried. "Do you want to kill him?""No, Misteh Julian, that's exactly——"He drew and levelled his revolver and then motioned with it a repetition of his command.With a woe of protest in her eyes, Phyllis obeyed. Lucian swallowed the draught and sank to his pillow. Julian watched Phyllis slowly set down the glass and bottle."What did you say that stuff is?" he asked his brother, with an assumed lightness."Oh, a palliative for these infernal pains. Have you told the family what happened? Go do it." The speaker's tone grew lofty. "I want them to know it was all my fault! This girl can stay with me till you come back, and you can take your time. I shan't need you for an hour. Go, Jule, my brother. Oh don't harry me with idle questions."As Julian presently shut himself out Phyllis, her fears for the patient disarmed by his transient excitement where she had looked for heaviness, laid her hand on a chair; but he stopped her. "You white nigger! would you presume to sit down in my presence? If you can't stand go outside—and shut the door. Oh, go anyhow! Life's more tolerable with you out of sight. If I want you I'll call."The room was close abaft the wheel, where a widening of the guards made an inviting space, and out there Phyllis drew a chair up beside the door. A whitejacket came from the cabin in behalf of passengers in neighboring staterooms to ask what the commotion meant, and as she began to explain it away Ramsey and old Joy came down a near-by stair to watch with her or in her stead and to them she amplified her explanation. Ramsey listened at the door. The patient seemed to be asleep, so audible was his breathing.She had a sudden thought: a doctor's saddle-bags always contain laudanum. Had Phyllis seen any—in another bottle, untouched? That would confirm the patient's denial. She beckoned and asked. Yes, Phyllis had seen it, labelled."And besides," Ramsey thought on, "neither twin has ever spoken falsely to the other." Why, then, sleep was good!Even in outer sights and sounds there was solace and reassurance: in river and shore forever passing majestically up-stream through floods of moonlight; in the rhythmic flutter and rush of wheels and foam, and in the keen quiver of theEnchantressflying to New Orleans on the swiftest wings steam could give. Ramsey sent Phyllis up to bid Julian be at ease, and the maid, returning, announced that both the commodores had gone to rest but that madame was anxious to come back to the invalid the moment he would permit. She added, unasked, that Captain Hugh was in the captain's chair.The hour passed and Julian reappeared. The partial relief of mind which had come to all the others had in degree reached him. It enabled him, as he came down the wheel-house stair, to reflect, though with a shudder, upon that furious treatment which alone, he had somewhere heard, would counteract an opium poisoning, and upon Lucian's utter inability to endure any part of such a treatment. He found Ramsey hearkening at the door again, newly disquieted. The two servants were out at the rail of the wide guards."Ought his breathing," she said, "to sound like that?"Julian thought not, but even a sister's solicitude offended his lifelong sentiment of paramount ownership in his brother. "Stand away, I'll let you know," he replied, passed in, and closed the door.Then all at once, as so often has happened to so many of us, he saw his heedlessness where he had fancied himself vigilant. The light was dim. He knelt close to the sleeper. One long stare into the pale yet livid face was enough. Lucian was dying. Julian leaped to his feet to seek aid but saw its futility and fell again to his knees. Lucian was dying of the "black-drop" which his brother, in haughty ignorance, by the hand of Phyllis, had given him.Presently Julian found voice, yet, mindful still of the listening Ramsey, let himself only softly murmur: "Oh, Lucian, my brother! Oh, Lucian, my twin brother! I've killed you, killed you twice over, my twin brother! God! but you're right not to live a cripple. And it was I who crippled you! Oh, Lucian, I'm the cripple now!"Ramsey tapped. He sprang to the door and without opening it answered: "Yes, in a minute. He—he's all right."At the wash-stand he lifted the phial of black-drop still half full. As quietly as if the dose were a dram at the bar he filled the measuring—glass and drank its last drop. Then he turned to the door and barely opened it."He's all right, Ramsey.... Yes.... Yes. He's done just the right thing. So have I. Now, go away, please, wherever you like, only don't—stay—here just to bother us. I'll merely lie down beside him without—What?... No, go away! You'll find us all right in the morning."
A few steps aside from Hugh and his grandfather at the forward rail of the hurricane roof, in a glow of autumn twilight, the Gilmores and the three couples taken on at Vicksburg observed theEnchantress, under Watson's skill, lay her lower guards against the guards of the Natchez wharf-boat with a touch as light as a human hand.
Down on the wharf-boat, in its double door, as beautiful in her fuller years as inVotaressdays, and more radiant, stood Madame Hayle. A man-servant at one elbow, a maid at the other, saw the group on the roof fondly bidding for her smiles, but except one sent earlier to the two Courteneys they were all for her husband and daughter, who, unseen from above, awaited her half-way down the main forward stairs. When the maid, however, leaned to her and spoke, her glance went aloft and her gestures were a joy even to the strangers who crowded the boat's side. Now while the stage was run out and her husband met her and gave her his arm, and white-jackets seized her effects, the man-servant answered a question softly called over to him by Ramsey, and the group overhead caught his words:
"De twins couldn' come. No, miss, 'caze dey ain't in town. No, miss, dey bofe went oveh to de Lou'siana place 'istiddy.... Yass, miss, on a bah hunt in Bayou Crocodile swamp."
Mrs. Gilmore stole a glance at Hugh, but the only sign that he had heard was a light nod to the mate below, and a like one up to Watson.
"Take in that stage," called the mate to his men. The engine bells jingled, theEnchantressbacked a moment on one wheel, then went forward on both, fluttered her skirts of leaping foam, made a wide, upstream turn, headed down the river, and swept away for Natchez Island just below and for New Orleans distant a full night's run. She had hardly put the island on her larboard bow when merrily up and down the cabin and out on the boiler deck and thence down the passenger guards rang the supper bell.
"Bayou Crocodile," said a Carthaginian descending the wheel-house stair, "that's where one of the sons-in-law has his plantation, isn't it?"
"On the Black River, yes," said he of Milliken's Bend.
"Near where it comes into Red River," added Vicksburg.
Once more Hugh and Ramsey sat alone side by side under a glorious night sky, at that view-point so rarely chosen by others but so favored by her—the front of the texas roof. Down forward at the captain's station sat the two commodores and up in the pilot-house were the two pilots, the Gilmores, "California," Madame Hayle, and they of Vicksburg and the Bends.
In the moral atmosphere of this uppermost group there was a new and happy clearness easily attributable to a single potent cause—Madame Hayle. Her advent and the moon's rising had come in the same hour and with very similar effect. Every one was aware for himself, though nobody could say when any one else had been told, that while Gideon's decision was still withheld, madame, in her own sweet, absolute way, had said it would be forthcoming before the boat touched the Canal Street wharf, and that in the interval, whether Hugh and Ramsey were never to sit side by side again, or were to go side by side the rest of their days, they should have this hour this way and were free to lengthen it out till night was gone, if they wished.
It was not late in any modern sense, yet on the passenger deck no one was up but the barkeeper, two or three quartets at cards, the second clerk at work on his freight list, a white-jacket or two on watch, and Joy and Phyllis. Thus assured of seclusion the lovers communed without haste. There had been hurried questions but Hugh had answered them and Ramsey was now passive, partly in the bliss of being at his side as she had never been before and partly in a despair growing out of his confessed purpose to leave theEnchantressat Red River Landing. The grandfather had already assumed Hugh's place and cares aboard, and it was Hugh's design to make his way, by boat or horse, up to and along Black River in search of the twins.
To allay this distress Hugh's soft deep voice said:
"Suppose you were a soldier's wife. This is little to that. This is but once for all."
"Yes," murmured Ramsey, "but I'd have one advantage."
"That you'd be his wife?"
"Yes," whispered Ramsey, who could not venture the name itself, for the pure rapture of it.
"Why, you're going to be mine. As the song says: 'I will come again, my love, though a' the seas gang dry.'"
"Hugh, didn't you once say I didn't know what fear was?"
"I certainly thought it."
"Well, now I do know."
He made no reply and she sat thinking of his errand. If he should find her brothers he would meet them in the deepest wilderness. Only slaves, who could not testify against masters, would be with them, their loaded guns would be in their hands, and their blood would be heated with—She resorted again to questions in her odd cross-examining way.
"You say you think there's going to be a war?"
"I fear so."
"Humph! fear. If there should be will you fight?"
"Certainly."
"Humph! certainly. I should think—you'd hate to fight."
"I'd fight all the more furiously on that account."
"Humph!... On which side?"
"Ramsey, I don't know. Idon't knowtill the time comes."
"Then how do you know you won't fight my brothers—now?"
"I shan't be armed."
"But if in an outburst you should snatch up some weapon?"
"I don't burst out. I don't snatch up."
"Humph! Wish I didn't."
They were rounding Point Breeze. The long reach from Fort Adams down to Red River Landing lay before them. "Hugh, did you ever have a presentiment? Of course not. I never did before. I got it a-comin' round Hard Times Bend."
"Then I can cure it—with a new verse, one our poet has made and given me. It shall be our parting word. Shall I?"
"Oh, yes, but not for parting! I don't want any parting!"
He spoke it softly:
"I dreamp I heard a joyful soun'—O hahd times!—Love once mo' foun' de last turn roun'Hahd Times Ben'.Los' an' foun', broke an' boun',Love foun' an' boun' de last turn roun'Hahd Times Ben'."
"I dreamp I heard a joyful soun'—O hahd times!—Love once mo' foun' de last turn roun'Hahd Times Ben'.Los' an' foun', broke an' boun',Love foun' an' boun' de last turn roun'Hahd Times Ben'."
"I dreamp I heard a joyful soun'—
O hahd times!—
Love once mo' foun' de last turn roun'
Hahd Times Ben'.
Los' an' foun', broke an' boun',
Love foun' an' boun' de last turn roun'
Hahd Times Ben'."
Ramsey barely waited for its end. "What's that light waving far away down yonder? It began as you did."
"It didn't know it. It's only some one on the Red River wharf-boat, wanting us to land," said Hugh, and before his last word came theEnchantressroared her assent to the signal. But Ramsey had spoken again:
"What's this, right here?" She sprang up and gazed out on the water a scant mile ahead. There, directly in the steamer's course and just out of the moon's track, another faint light waved, so close to the water as to be reflected in it. The moment the whistle broke out it ceased to swing and when the whistle ceased the engines had stopped.
"What is it?" she asked again as Hugh stood by her looking out ahead with eyes better trained to night use than hers.
"A skiff," he replied, "with some message."
She could see only that Watson had put the light on their starboard bow. It seemed to drift toward them but she knew that the movement was the steamer's, and now the light was so close as to show the negro who held it. He stood poised to throw aboard a billet of wood with a note attached. And now he cast it. The lower guards were out of Ramsey's line of sight but a cry of disappointment told her the stick had fallen short and would be lost under the great wheel, which at that moment, with its fellow, "went ahead." But as theEnchantresspassed the skiff its occupant called out a hurried statement to the mate, on the forecastle, and as the skiff and its light swept astern the mate repeated the word to the commodores.
"Man at Red River Landing accidentally shot. Must be got to the city quick or he can't live."
The commodores, and then the lovers, resumed their seats.
"Poor man," murmured Ramsey, "poor man! he's gothistrouble without going in chase of it."
"If he'd gone in chase of it," rejoined Hugh, "he might never have met it."
TheEnchantressswung more directly toward the dim lights of the wharf-boat and at top speed ruffled through a freshening air with the goal but a few miles away. Yet the lovers sat silent. Once parted they would think of many a word they should have spoken while they could, but now none seemed large enough to break such silence with. To be silent and best content with silence was one of the most special and blissful of lovers' rights.
Presently a glow rose from the forecastle, reddening the white jack-staff up to its black night-hawk. The torch baskets were being lighted. Hugh stirred to go but Ramsey laid her touch on his wrist and he stayed.
She spoke. "Mustn't you wait near your grandfather till you see who it is that's coming aboard?"
"I can. I may as well."
TheEnchantress, in mid-river, began to "round to" in order to land bow up-stream. When she came round, the half dozen men on the wharf-boat were close at hand in the glare of her torches, eye to eye with those on the forecastle, but prevented by the light itself from seeing those on the upper decks.
Ramsey sprang to her feet with lips apart to cry out to her mother up behind her, to Gideon down before, to Hugh at her side, but all these saw and knew. A face in the centre of the torchlight and of the wharf-boat group was Julian's bearing the mute intelligence that the writhing man on a rude stretcher borne by two negroes was his brother. The lovers parted without a word, but in a moment were near each other again as Hugh joined the commodores while Ramsey and her mother crouched at the roof's forward rail to see the wounded man brought across the stage.
"In my room!" pleaded madame to both Courteneys at once, and the elder assented as Hugh hurried below with the three Hayles following.
It was heart-rending work getting the sufferer into the berth while he poured out moanings of agony mingled with frantic accusations of his bearers, railings against God and all his laws, and unspoken recognitions of mother and sister. Ramsey, seeing his eye fall on Phyllis and remain there staring, and knowing from old Joy that he had grown enough like his uncle Dan to have been his twin, suffered for her as well as him.
"Who areyou?" he cried, still staring. "Where am I?"
The maid did not reply, but her unfaltering gaze met his as if it neither could nor would do otherwise. Ramsey intuitively followed the play of her mind. To look again on Gideon Hayle had already recalled emotions she had striven for half a lifetime to put away, and now they kept her eyes set on this tortured yet unrelenting advocate of all the wrongs from which those emotions sprang.
He looked to his mother. "Great God! mother, is this the new Courteney boat? Well, if this isn't hell's finishing touch! Jule! Where's Jule? Go, get me Jule!"
Phyllis turned to go but—"No," he cried with a light of sudden purpose in his face, "you stay. Everybody else go! And send me Jule. Don't send a doctor, I'm the doctor myself. Get out, all of you, go! This isn't my death-bed. God! I wish it was, for I'm a cripple for life and will never walk again—leave! go! and send me Jule!"
Guided by a cabin-boy to Hugh's room, Ramsey found Julian confronting his father, "California," and the Gilmores. Hugh had led them there for privacy and stood close at one side. Julian seemed to be suffering a shock scarcely less than his brother's though it made a wholly different outward show. His face wore an appalled look, his voice was below its accustomed pitch, and his words, words which could not have been premeditated, seemed studiously fit and precise.
"Fortunately," he had been saying before Ramsey appeared, "he never"—meaning his brother—"goes into the country without his drugs and instruments—we have them with us yet—and he could tell me what to do and I did it, or he would have died right there in the swamp."
"But you don't say how the accursed thing happened," said Gideon as Ramsey entered hardly aware that she was pausing at Hugh's side. The brother turned and stared on the two.
"Come," said Gideon, "never mind that. How did it happen?"
"It happened, sir, through my own incredible carelessness and by my own hand.Don't say a word!I would to God I had been the victim and had fallen dead in my tracks. If I had killed him I would have put the other load into my brain."
"Oh, if!" solemnly sneered the incredulous father. While he did so Julian, the profoundness of whose mental torture his father poorly saw, received from Ramsey his brother's summons and with her was turning away. He stopped and flashed back a look of agonized resentment, but Gideon met it with a beetling frown and neither gaze fell until Ramsey stepped between, facing the giant, and she and the brother backed away and were gone.
They sought the passenger deck. Between anguish for Lucian's calamity and anguish for his father's contumely there poured from Julian's lips in hectoring questions to Ramsey a further anguish of chagrin for the seeming triumph of Hugh's love. Two or three challenges she parried and while in a single utterance he launched out as many more they encountered at a wheel-house stair their mother and old Joy. He cut short all inquiries with a proffer to return to them and Ramsey post-haste and give a full account of the disaster.
Meantime down in the sick-room Lucian said to Phyllis, when they had been a few minutes alone:
"And now give me my medicine."
"Yes, sir; where is it?"
"Oh, damnation! in my saddle-bags on the washstand. What are you trying to talk white folks' English for?" He hardly spoke three words without a moan or an oath. "Do you find a measuring-glass?"
She found it.
"See a small bottle—dark liquid—about twice the size—of the glass?"
"Yass, suh, but it's full, suh."
"Hell! what of that? Fill the glass and give it to me!"
She filled it but paused. "It—it looks like la'danum."
"Oh, damn you, so did your great-grandmother. It's not laudanum. Did you ever smell vinegar in laudanum, or nutmeg? Give it here! God A'mighty, if I could reach you with my fist—Give me that glass!"
"Misteh Lucian, if this is la'danum——"
"You hell-fired idiot, it isn't! And if it was, such an overdose would only vomit me. Don't you know that?"
"Yass, suh, I know it would." But still she held back.
"Then give it here!"
Julian came in with alarm added to his other distresses.
"Oh, Luce! do you want to start that bleeding again?"
"I'd just as lief as not! Make that wench give me that glass or mash her head! She knows if it was laudanum it would merely puke me. Damn it, it's a simple euthanasia." The crafty sufferer felt assured his brother would neither know nor ask the smooth word's meaning.
Julian turned, savagely upon the maid. Heated with drink, enraged at himself, his father, Hugh Courteney, his sister, and his mother, he was in no mood to humor the contumacy of any freed slave and least of all this one. "Give it to him this instant," he cried. "Do you want to kill him?"
"No, Misteh Julian, that's exactly——"
He drew and levelled his revolver and then motioned with it a repetition of his command.
With a woe of protest in her eyes, Phyllis obeyed. Lucian swallowed the draught and sank to his pillow. Julian watched Phyllis slowly set down the glass and bottle.
"What did you say that stuff is?" he asked his brother, with an assumed lightness.
"Oh, a palliative for these infernal pains. Have you told the family what happened? Go do it." The speaker's tone grew lofty. "I want them to know it was all my fault! This girl can stay with me till you come back, and you can take your time. I shan't need you for an hour. Go, Jule, my brother. Oh don't harry me with idle questions."
As Julian presently shut himself out Phyllis, her fears for the patient disarmed by his transient excitement where she had looked for heaviness, laid her hand on a chair; but he stopped her. "You white nigger! would you presume to sit down in my presence? If you can't stand go outside—and shut the door. Oh, go anyhow! Life's more tolerable with you out of sight. If I want you I'll call."
The room was close abaft the wheel, where a widening of the guards made an inviting space, and out there Phyllis drew a chair up beside the door. A whitejacket came from the cabin in behalf of passengers in neighboring staterooms to ask what the commotion meant, and as she began to explain it away Ramsey and old Joy came down a near-by stair to watch with her or in her stead and to them she amplified her explanation. Ramsey listened at the door. The patient seemed to be asleep, so audible was his breathing.
She had a sudden thought: a doctor's saddle-bags always contain laudanum. Had Phyllis seen any—in another bottle, untouched? That would confirm the patient's denial. She beckoned and asked. Yes, Phyllis had seen it, labelled.
"And besides," Ramsey thought on, "neither twin has ever spoken falsely to the other." Why, then, sleep was good!
Even in outer sights and sounds there was solace and reassurance: in river and shore forever passing majestically up-stream through floods of moonlight; in the rhythmic flutter and rush of wheels and foam, and in the keen quiver of theEnchantressflying to New Orleans on the swiftest wings steam could give. Ramsey sent Phyllis up to bid Julian be at ease, and the maid, returning, announced that both the commodores had gone to rest but that madame was anxious to come back to the invalid the moment he would permit. She added, unasked, that Captain Hugh was in the captain's chair.
The hour passed and Julian reappeared. The partial relief of mind which had come to all the others had in degree reached him. It enabled him, as he came down the wheel-house stair, to reflect, though with a shudder, upon that furious treatment which alone, he had somewhere heard, would counteract an opium poisoning, and upon Lucian's utter inability to endure any part of such a treatment. He found Ramsey hearkening at the door again, newly disquieted. The two servants were out at the rail of the wide guards.
"Ought his breathing," she said, "to sound like that?"
Julian thought not, but even a sister's solicitude offended his lifelong sentiment of paramount ownership in his brother. "Stand away, I'll let you know," he replied, passed in, and closed the door.
Then all at once, as so often has happened to so many of us, he saw his heedlessness where he had fancied himself vigilant. The light was dim. He knelt close to the sleeper. One long stare into the pale yet livid face was enough. Lucian was dying. Julian leaped to his feet to seek aid but saw its futility and fell again to his knees. Lucian was dying of the "black-drop" which his brother, in haughty ignorance, by the hand of Phyllis, had given him.
Presently Julian found voice, yet, mindful still of the listening Ramsey, let himself only softly murmur: "Oh, Lucian, my brother! Oh, Lucian, my twin brother! I've killed you, killed you twice over, my twin brother! God! but you're right not to live a cripple. And it was I who crippled you! Oh, Lucian, I'm the cripple now!"
Ramsey tapped. He sprang to the door and without opening it answered: "Yes, in a minute. He—he's all right."
At the wash-stand he lifted the phial of black-drop still half full. As quietly as if the dose were a dram at the bar he filled the measuring—glass and drank its last drop. Then he turned to the door and barely opened it.
"He's all right, Ramsey.... Yes.... Yes. He's done just the right thing. So have I. Now, go away, please, wherever you like, only don't—stay—here just to bother us. I'll merely lie down beside him without—What?... No, go away! You'll find us all right in the morning."
LXIIITHE CAPTAIN'S CHAIR
On the next afternoon but one, while hundreds went down to the steamboat landing to view the newEnchantress, there was a double funeral in the old French cemetery, Saint Louis Street, New Orleans.Returning from it together, Watson and his former "cub" spoke of Gideon Hayle."He takes the loss of them boys harder'n what I'd 'a' thought he would," said the younger pilot.And Watson replied: "Yes, but he don't take it as hard as what, years ago, he tuck their fust refus'n' to go with him on the river."They said no more all the way up Rampart Street to Canal, out Canal to the steamboat landing, and across the levee to theEnchantress. An hour later they stood in her wheel-house, looking down on the same Saturday afternoon five o'clock scene that Watson and Ned had thus contemplated from theVotaressa hundred months before.Here were the same vast piles of harvest wealth, the same crowds and little flags, the same shouting and tumult only grown greater, the same open sky—though of October—the same many-pillared cloud of black smoke, the same smartly painted bumboats selling oranges, bananas, pineapples, corals, and seashells—many of the latter treated with puritanic art, having, that is, the Lord's Prayer bitten into them with muriatic acid. Here lay the same yellow harbor with many more fussy little tugs in it, its water low yet still mast-deep, its yard-long catfish and fathom-long gars leaping and wallowing after their prey, its white gulls flashing about the steamers' pantry windows. Here was the same black forest of ships in the up-stream and down-stream distance and here, finally, the same public hope and pride grown wider and loftier in their last affluence before entering that purgatory of civil war which now seems but a bad dream outlived.Steam was up on theEnchantress, and every now and then her mighty wheels tugged on her hawsers. In the crowd gathered on the wharf to see her go were the Gilmores and the half dozen from Vicksburg and the Bends. Up on the hurricane-deck were two or three small knots of passengers, chiefly ladies, unknown to the Gilmore group; but beside a derrick post, where we first saw Hugh on theVotaress, stood the three Hayles, old Joy, and "California"—bound once more for the gold-diggings. Near the Hayles, yet nearer the bell, was Hugh, in command."You don't reckon," said a voice in the throng, "that that's her captain, do you?""No," said another, "I should think not.""Yes," said the very human Gilmore, "that's the captain."Vicksburg and the Bends sent up smiles and faint wavings to Ramsey and her mother and only did not call to them because they were in a great city. It made them very proud and happy to see Hugh the master of this, to them, matchless wonder of utility and beauty, and they could not help saying things to each other with voice enough to let strangers around them know he was their personal friend. While they did so who should alight from a cab and glance up to Hugh but his grandfather. Hugh answered with a gesture toward the Gilmores, to whom the old gentleman promptly turned. There had arisen among the boats a good-natured custom of giving friends a free trip eight miles up the river, to the suburb of Carrollton. So a word from the commodore was enough; the players and their group hurried aboard with him and as they touched the lower deck the last bell sounded and the lines were cast off.When they reached the hurricane-deck they were in the middle of the stream. They did not join the senior Hayles at once; Ramsey met them and with her they stood on the skylight roof watching the shores to see when they should stop drifting and gain headway. Over on the "Algiers" side of the harbor lay theParagon, repairing a smashing she had got at the wharf through the bad handling of another boat, else the Hayles would hardly have been going home on theEnchantress.The crew of theEnchantressstood about her capstan and their chantey-man, ready to sing when the swivel should peal and her burgee run down; but the Gilmore group were too far aft to see them. The player's wife, speaking gravely with Ramsey in low tones, remarked with sudden gayety:"I see why we're here behind the bell. You're afraid they'll sing——"Ramsey made a pleading gesture."Why, what can you expect," asked her friend; "not 'Bounding Billow'?"Ramsey, laughing, could only repeat the gesture. The swivel pealed, down sank the burgee, a wind began to ruffle their brows, and up rolled the song:"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de sea ships come an' go,On de finess boat dat eveh float," etc.It was still coming up when a young man not of the Gilmore group surprised the actor a moment aside."Mr. Gilmore, is that Commodore Hayle over there?... I thought it must be. I suppose he's going up home to settle his two sons' affairs. Mr. Gilmore, they wan't bad, they were only wild. Sad, their having to be buried in the city. But in this climate, you know—hmm!—yes."The song and his observations crossed back and forth."Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, you'd ought to come befo'"—(Chorus)"You don't remember me, Mr. Gilmore, but I was on theVotaresswith you and your lady and Madame Hayle and those twins and all. I married the young lady I was keeping company with then. There she is. Don't you re-collect my lending you my field-glass at the Devil's Elbow?""Dear me! was that you at the devil's elbow! I—I hope I returned them.""Oh, you did! You remember the first clerk of theVotaress! He's her captain now. And Ned—you remember Ned, the pilot, don't you? Well, he's on her yet. I see you're lost in admiration of this most unusual sunset. We almost always have these unusual sunsets. This is a wonderful country.""Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de sweet cane honey flow'.(Chorus)"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, love a-knockin' at de do'."(Chorus)Now the boat was in the pilot's hands. Hugh joined Madame Hayle and the two commodores at the derrick post. The same shrewd texas tender who had once abstracted the weapons of the twins from their stateroom set a second chair beside the captain's. Hugh offered the two seats to the commodores, but both declined. They of Vicksburg and the Bends watched the gorgeous October sunset beyond the low, flat orangeries on their right. "California" was with them and told them of the sunsets on the great plains. Gilmore generously kept the one-time lender of the field-glass and the lender's mouse of a wife beguiled with anecdotes while Mrs. Gilmore talked on with Ramsey, making fond and welcome incursions into her confidence."Isn't it ridiculous," murmured Ramsey, "that he seems condemned to do everything in the tamest possible way? Not that he cares; he seems almost to like it so. It's so right now. He can't proclaim anything. And—you see why, don't you?—neither can I.""Ramsey, you needn't. Only do one thing for us, Gilmore and me, and we'll know. When we've landed and the boat starts away again and he—" She finished in a voice too small for type.At Six Mile Point the actor escaped his bonds and for a moment got Hugh into his sole possession."Certainly, under these conditions," he assented, "you can'tassertanything—of that particular sort. But see here: You can tell me, just for us two Gilmores exclusively, what your next boat will be named. Can't you?""Yes," said Hugh, "she'll be the—" He let Gilmore speak the name interrogatively and merely nodded, smiling.TheEnchantresswas within five minutes' run of Carrollton when Watson dropped a quiet word to the roof, where both the Courteneys and Gideon were looking up-stream at a downward-bound steamer which had rounded to and landed under Nine-Mile Point."What is she?" asked Gilmore of Watson for his group."A Hayle boat, theTroubadour," said the pilot; "probably putting off some sugar-house machinery."TheEnchantressneared the huge Carrollton levee. "Good-by." "Good-by." "Good-by." "Good-by." Down they hurried, the old commodore, the players, the extraneous pair, and the six from Vicksburg and the Bends, followed to the stage plank by "California," and waved to from the after guards by Joy and Phyllis."Good-by." "Good-by!" The beautiful craft backed away and turned for Nine-Mile Point. And here came theTroubadour, with whistles trumpeting a troubadour's salute to the new queen of the river. The Hayle boat's people had espied their own commodore and the black mass on their forecastle were singing "Gideon's Band."With whistles above and song below theEnchantressreplied. The whistles ceased; the song was "'Lindy":"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, to meet to paht no mo',On de finess boat dat eveh float'In de O—hi—o,De Mas-sis-sip-pi aw de O—hi—o."Back at Carrollton on the crown of the levee, standing apart from their companions, the players gazed after theEnchantress. The three Hayles had returned to their stand by the derrick post. Hugh was near the two chairs. The actor softly spoke:"Shall I tell you what Hugh told me?""Yes," said the wife."Then tell me what Ramsey told you.""Nothing. She's going to tell it now. Watch!"They watched together. Ramsey crossed to Hugh, and seemed to speak a word or two, not more. He sat down in the captain's chair and she took the one beside him.Even Vicksburg and the Bends understood that."He told me," murmured the actor, "that the next Courteney boat will be theRamsey Hayle."
On the next afternoon but one, while hundreds went down to the steamboat landing to view the newEnchantress, there was a double funeral in the old French cemetery, Saint Louis Street, New Orleans.
Returning from it together, Watson and his former "cub" spoke of Gideon Hayle.
"He takes the loss of them boys harder'n what I'd 'a' thought he would," said the younger pilot.
And Watson replied: "Yes, but he don't take it as hard as what, years ago, he tuck their fust refus'n' to go with him on the river."
They said no more all the way up Rampart Street to Canal, out Canal to the steamboat landing, and across the levee to theEnchantress. An hour later they stood in her wheel-house, looking down on the same Saturday afternoon five o'clock scene that Watson and Ned had thus contemplated from theVotaressa hundred months before.
Here were the same vast piles of harvest wealth, the same crowds and little flags, the same shouting and tumult only grown greater, the same open sky—though of October—the same many-pillared cloud of black smoke, the same smartly painted bumboats selling oranges, bananas, pineapples, corals, and seashells—many of the latter treated with puritanic art, having, that is, the Lord's Prayer bitten into them with muriatic acid. Here lay the same yellow harbor with many more fussy little tugs in it, its water low yet still mast-deep, its yard-long catfish and fathom-long gars leaping and wallowing after their prey, its white gulls flashing about the steamers' pantry windows. Here was the same black forest of ships in the up-stream and down-stream distance and here, finally, the same public hope and pride grown wider and loftier in their last affluence before entering that purgatory of civil war which now seems but a bad dream outlived.
Steam was up on theEnchantress, and every now and then her mighty wheels tugged on her hawsers. In the crowd gathered on the wharf to see her go were the Gilmores and the half dozen from Vicksburg and the Bends. Up on the hurricane-deck were two or three small knots of passengers, chiefly ladies, unknown to the Gilmore group; but beside a derrick post, where we first saw Hugh on theVotaress, stood the three Hayles, old Joy, and "California"—bound once more for the gold-diggings. Near the Hayles, yet nearer the bell, was Hugh, in command.
"You don't reckon," said a voice in the throng, "that that's her captain, do you?"
"No," said another, "I should think not."
"Yes," said the very human Gilmore, "that's the captain."
Vicksburg and the Bends sent up smiles and faint wavings to Ramsey and her mother and only did not call to them because they were in a great city. It made them very proud and happy to see Hugh the master of this, to them, matchless wonder of utility and beauty, and they could not help saying things to each other with voice enough to let strangers around them know he was their personal friend. While they did so who should alight from a cab and glance up to Hugh but his grandfather. Hugh answered with a gesture toward the Gilmores, to whom the old gentleman promptly turned. There had arisen among the boats a good-natured custom of giving friends a free trip eight miles up the river, to the suburb of Carrollton. So a word from the commodore was enough; the players and their group hurried aboard with him and as they touched the lower deck the last bell sounded and the lines were cast off.
When they reached the hurricane-deck they were in the middle of the stream. They did not join the senior Hayles at once; Ramsey met them and with her they stood on the skylight roof watching the shores to see when they should stop drifting and gain headway. Over on the "Algiers" side of the harbor lay theParagon, repairing a smashing she had got at the wharf through the bad handling of another boat, else the Hayles would hardly have been going home on theEnchantress.
The crew of theEnchantressstood about her capstan and their chantey-man, ready to sing when the swivel should peal and her burgee run down; but the Gilmore group were too far aft to see them. The player's wife, speaking gravely with Ramsey in low tones, remarked with sudden gayety:
"I see why we're here behind the bell. You're afraid they'll sing——"
Ramsey made a pleading gesture.
"Why, what can you expect," asked her friend; "not 'Bounding Billow'?"
Ramsey, laughing, could only repeat the gesture. The swivel pealed, down sank the burgee, a wind began to ruffle their brows, and up rolled the song:
"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de sea ships come an' go,On de finess boat dat eveh float," etc.
"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de sea ships come an' go,On de finess boat dat eveh float," etc.
"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de sea ships come an' go,
On de finess boat dat eveh float," etc.
It was still coming up when a young man not of the Gilmore group surprised the actor a moment aside.
"Mr. Gilmore, is that Commodore Hayle over there?... I thought it must be. I suppose he's going up home to settle his two sons' affairs. Mr. Gilmore, they wan't bad, they were only wild. Sad, their having to be buried in the city. But in this climate, you know—hmm!—yes."
The song and his observations crossed back and forth.
"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, you'd ought to come befo'"—(Chorus)
"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, you'd ought to come befo'"—(Chorus)
"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, you'd ought to come befo'"—
(Chorus)
"You don't remember me, Mr. Gilmore, but I was on theVotaresswith you and your lady and Madame Hayle and those twins and all. I married the young lady I was keeping company with then. There she is. Don't you re-collect my lending you my field-glass at the Devil's Elbow?"
"Dear me! was that you at the devil's elbow! I—I hope I returned them."
"Oh, you did! You remember the first clerk of theVotaress! He's her captain now. And Ned—you remember Ned, the pilot, don't you? Well, he's on her yet. I see you're lost in admiration of this most unusual sunset. We almost always have these unusual sunsets. This is a wonderful country."
"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de sweet cane honey flow'.(Chorus)"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, love a-knockin' at de do'."(Chorus)
"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de sweet cane honey flow'.(Chorus)
"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de sweet cane honey flow'.
(Chorus)
"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, love a-knockin' at de do'."(Chorus)
"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, love a-knockin' at de do'."
(Chorus)
Now the boat was in the pilot's hands. Hugh joined Madame Hayle and the two commodores at the derrick post. The same shrewd texas tender who had once abstracted the weapons of the twins from their stateroom set a second chair beside the captain's. Hugh offered the two seats to the commodores, but both declined. They of Vicksburg and the Bends watched the gorgeous October sunset beyond the low, flat orangeries on their right. "California" was with them and told them of the sunsets on the great plains. Gilmore generously kept the one-time lender of the field-glass and the lender's mouse of a wife beguiled with anecdotes while Mrs. Gilmore talked on with Ramsey, making fond and welcome incursions into her confidence.
"Isn't it ridiculous," murmured Ramsey, "that he seems condemned to do everything in the tamest possible way? Not that he cares; he seems almost to like it so. It's so right now. He can't proclaim anything. And—you see why, don't you?—neither can I."
"Ramsey, you needn't. Only do one thing for us, Gilmore and me, and we'll know. When we've landed and the boat starts away again and he—" She finished in a voice too small for type.
At Six Mile Point the actor escaped his bonds and for a moment got Hugh into his sole possession.
"Certainly, under these conditions," he assented, "you can'tassertanything—of that particular sort. But see here: You can tell me, just for us two Gilmores exclusively, what your next boat will be named. Can't you?"
"Yes," said Hugh, "she'll be the—" He let Gilmore speak the name interrogatively and merely nodded, smiling.
TheEnchantresswas within five minutes' run of Carrollton when Watson dropped a quiet word to the roof, where both the Courteneys and Gideon were looking up-stream at a downward-bound steamer which had rounded to and landed under Nine-Mile Point.
"What is she?" asked Gilmore of Watson for his group.
"A Hayle boat, theTroubadour," said the pilot; "probably putting off some sugar-house machinery."
TheEnchantressneared the huge Carrollton levee. "Good-by." "Good-by." "Good-by." "Good-by." Down they hurried, the old commodore, the players, the extraneous pair, and the six from Vicksburg and the Bends, followed to the stage plank by "California," and waved to from the after guards by Joy and Phyllis.
"Good-by." "Good-by!" The beautiful craft backed away and turned for Nine-Mile Point. And here came theTroubadour, with whistles trumpeting a troubadour's salute to the new queen of the river. The Hayle boat's people had espied their own commodore and the black mass on their forecastle were singing "Gideon's Band."
With whistles above and song below theEnchantressreplied. The whistles ceased; the song was "'Lindy":
"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, to meet to paht no mo',On de finess boat dat eveh float'In de O—hi—o,De Mas-sis-sip-pi aw de O—hi—o."
"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, to meet to paht no mo',On de finess boat dat eveh float'In de O—hi—o,De Mas-sis-sip-pi aw de O—hi—o."
"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, to meet to paht no mo',
On de finess boat dat eveh float'
In de O—hi—o,
De Mas-sis-sip-pi aw de O—hi—o."
Back at Carrollton on the crown of the levee, standing apart from their companions, the players gazed after theEnchantress. The three Hayles had returned to their stand by the derrick post. Hugh was near the two chairs. The actor softly spoke:
"Shall I tell you what Hugh told me?"
"Yes," said the wife.
"Then tell me what Ramsey told you."
"Nothing. She's going to tell it now. Watch!"
They watched together. Ramsey crossed to Hugh, and seemed to speak a word or two, not more. He sat down in the captain's chair and she took the one beside him.
Even Vicksburg and the Bends understood that.
"He told me," murmured the actor, "that the next Courteney boat will be theRamsey Hayle."