XXXIIA PROPHET IN THE WILDERNESS
Through all the middle watch of Sunday night, with her Ned quite alone in the pilot-house, theVotaresscame and passed from crossing to crossing, up reaches, through chutes, around points and bends, a meteor in harness. Such she seemed from the dim shores. So came, so passed, before the drowsy gaze of that strange attenuated fraction of humanity which scantily peopled the waters and margins of the great river to win from it the bare elements of livelihood or transit, winning them at a death-rate not far below the immigrant's and in a vagabondage often as wild as that of the water-fowl passing unseen in the upper darkness.If to the contemplation of the Courteneys, father and son, the fair craft, "with all her light and life, speeding, twinkling on and on through the night," was "a swarm of stars," or "one little whole world," how shall we see her—with what sense of wonder and splendor—through the eyes of the flatboatman or the swamper, the raftsman, the island squatter, the trading-scow man, the runaway slave in the canebrake, the woodyard man, or the "pirooter"—that degenerate heir, dwarfed to a parasite, of the terrible, earlier-day land-pirates and river-wolves of Plum Point and Crow's Nest Island? To such sorts, self-described as human snapping-turtles and alligators, her peacock show of innumerable lights was the jewelled crown of the only civilization they knew, knowing it only with the same aloofness with which they knew the stars. She woke them with the flutter of her wheels as of winged feet and passed like a goddess using the river's points and islands for stepping-stones, her bosom wrapped in a self-communion that gave no least hint of its intolerable load of grief and strife.Not until she entered the great bend of Vicksburg did she once come into contrast with anything that could in any degree diminish her regal supremacy. There, as day was breaking, she entered the deep shadow of the southernmost "Walnut Hill." The town on its crest was two hundred feet above her lower deck, and the stiff Yazoo squire, his kindly brother-in-law and sister and the Vicksburg merchant and his wife, waiting down there while she slowed up to the wharf-boat at its foot to let them and others off, were proud of the bluff and of the two miles of sister hills hid by it and the night. Even overproud they were. The two husbands and wives silently wished for that lover of wonders, the sleeping Ramsey, that they might enjoy her enjoyment of the sight, who, though from exalted Natchez, never had beheld so vast an eminence or a city stuck up quite so high.But Ramsey, far removed in her new, sweet-smelling berth, did not stir from a slumber into which she was throwing all the weight of an overloaded experience. She was paying large back taxes to sleep and had become so immersed in the transaction that her mother's rising, dressing, and stealing away lifted, this time, not one of her eyelashes. In not a sigh or motion did she respond to the long, quaking, world-filling roar of theVotaress'swhistle, nor to John Courteney's tolling of her great bell, nor to the jingle of lesser bells below, nor to any stopping or reversing or new going ahead of her wheels either for landing or for backing out and straightening up the river again. She slept on though these were the very Walnut Hills of her uncle Dan's and Phyllis's dark story; persevered in sleep though John Courteney's son, her profoundest marvel, was once more up and out, with the story still on his heart and "a-happmin' yit." It was one of its happenings that, very naturally, though quite unreasonably, he begrudged the sleeper's absence from texas roof and pilot-house.TheVotaresswas under full headway, with Vicksburg astern, Watson again at the wheel and the captain in his chair. The most northerly of the Walnut Hills were on the starboard bow. Beyond them the sun, rising into thunder-clouds, poured a dusty-yellow light over the tops of their almost unbroken woods, here and there brightening with a strange vividness the tilled fields and white homestead and slave quarters of some noted plantation. Between the hills and the river lay a mile's breadth or more of densely forested swamp, or "bottom," swarming with reptiles great and small, abounding in deer, bear, and panther, and from which, though the buffalo had been long banished, the wolf was not yet gone. On the skylight roof, close "abaft the bell," as Ramsey would have said, stood the commodore and Hugh. They had just met there and after a casual word or so Hugh was about to say something requiring an effort, when they were joined by the exhorter."Mawnin', gentle-men," he said. "Now, what you reckon them-ah po' Gawd-fo'-saken'd Eu-rope-ians down-stahs air a-thinkin' to theyse'v's whilst they view this-yeh lan'scape o'? D'you reckon they eveh, ev'm in they dreams o' heav'm, see sich"'Sweet fiel's beyond the swellin' floodStand deck' in livin' green'?"I tell you, gentle-men, as sho' as man made the city an' Gawd made the country, he made this-yeh country last, when he'd got his hand in! You see that-ah house an' cedah grove on yan rise? Well, that's the old 'Good Luck Plantation.' Gid Hayle 'uz bawn thah. His fatheh went to Gawd f'om thah an' lef' it to Dan, the pilot, what 'uz lost on theQua'—Hell! listen at me! As efyoudidn't know that, which ev'y sight o' you stahts folks a-talkin' about it! But, Lawd! what a country this-yeh 'Azoo Delta is, to be sho'! Fo' craps! All this-yeh Mis'sippi Riveh, you mowt say, fo'm Cairo down, an' th' 'Azoo fo' the top-rail! Fo' craps—an' the money-makin'est craps! An' jest as much fo' game! Not pokeh but wile game; fo'-footen beasts afteh they kind an' fowl afteh they kind. An' ef a country's great fo' crapsan'game, what mo' kin it be great faw what ain't pyo' Babylonian vanity an' Eu-rope-ian stinch?"The commodore admitted that game was a good thing and that crops were even better."No, sir-ee! Game comes fust! Man makes the craps but Gawd made the game! It come fust when it fust come an' it comes fust yit! Lawd A'mighty! who wouldn't drutheh hunt than plough, ef he could hev his druthehs? But the game ain't what it wuz, not ev'm in this-yeh 'Azoo country an' not ev'm o' the feathe'd kind. Oh, wile turkey, o' co'se, they here yit, by thousan's, an' wile goose, an' duck, an' teal, by hund'eds o' thousan's, an' wile pigeon, clouds of 'em, 'at dahkened the noonday sun. Reckon you see' 'em do that, ain't you? I see' it this ve'y season. But, now, take the pelikin! if game is a fah' name fo' him—aw heh, as the case may be; which that bird—nine foot f'm tip to tip, the white ones—use' to be as common on this riveh as cuckle-burrs in a sheep's tail!" The jester laughed, or, more strictly, exhaled his mirth from the roof of a wide-spread mouth in a long hiss that would have been more like an angered alligator's if alligators used fine-cut tobacco. It was addressed to the commodore; for Hugh, his grandfather's conscious inferior in human charity, had turned the squarest back—for its height—aboard theVotaress, to gaze on a wonderful sight in the eastern sky. The exhorter resumed:"Why, I ain't see' a pelikin sence I use' to flatboat down to Orleans—f'om Honey Islan' an' th' 'Azoo City. 'Pelikin in the wildeh-ness,' says the holy book, but they 'can't stan' the wildeh-ness!' They plumb gone!—vamoost!—down to the Gulf!—what few ain't been shot!" He grew indignant. "An' whahfo' shot? Faw noth'n'! Jeemany-crackies! gentle-men, it makes my blood bile an' my bile go sour! Ain't no bounty on pelikins. Dead pelikins ain't useful—naw awnamental—naw instructive, an' much less they don't tas'e good. No, suh, they jess shot in pyo' devil-mentby awngawdly damn fools—same as them on this boat all day 'istiddy a-poppin' they pistols at ev'y live thing they see'—fo' no damn' reason in the heab'ms above aw the earth beneath aw the watehs undeh the earth—Lawd! it mighty nigh makes me swah! An' I feel the heab'mly call—seein' as that-ah tub-shape' Methodis' bishoph-ain'tfeel it—fo' to tell you, commodo', you-all hadn't ought allowed that hell-fi'ud nonsense on Gawd's holy day."Even to his grandfather's response Hugh paid no visible attention. The eastern sky had become such a picture that down forward at the break of the deck John Courteney rose eagerly from his chair and looked back and up to be sure that his son was one of its spectators. Yes, Hugh was just casting a like glance to him and now turned to invite the notice of his grandfather. The thunder-clouds had so encompassed the sun that its rays burst through them almost exclusively in one wide crater, crimsoning, bronzing, and gilding their vaporous and ever-changing walls. Thence they spread earthward, heavenward, leaving remoter masses to writhe darkly on each other and themselves, in and out, in and in, cloaking this hill in blue shadow, bathing that one in green light, while from a watery fastness somewhere hid in the depth of the forested swamp under the hills, some long-lost bend of the Mississippi or cut-off of the Yazoo, rose into the flood of beams an innumerable immaculate swarm of giant cranes. Half were white as silver, half were black as jet, and from moment to moment each jet magically turned to silver, each silver to jet, as on slowly pulsing wings they wove a labyrinthian way through their own multitude with never a clash of pinion on pinion, up, down, athwart and around, up, down, and around again, now raven black across the sun and now silver and snow against the cloud.An awed voice broke the stillness and old Joy stood a modest step back from Hugh's side with rapt gaze on hill and sky.
Through all the middle watch of Sunday night, with her Ned quite alone in the pilot-house, theVotaresscame and passed from crossing to crossing, up reaches, through chutes, around points and bends, a meteor in harness. Such she seemed from the dim shores. So came, so passed, before the drowsy gaze of that strange attenuated fraction of humanity which scantily peopled the waters and margins of the great river to win from it the bare elements of livelihood or transit, winning them at a death-rate not far below the immigrant's and in a vagabondage often as wild as that of the water-fowl passing unseen in the upper darkness.
If to the contemplation of the Courteneys, father and son, the fair craft, "with all her light and life, speeding, twinkling on and on through the night," was "a swarm of stars," or "one little whole world," how shall we see her—with what sense of wonder and splendor—through the eyes of the flatboatman or the swamper, the raftsman, the island squatter, the trading-scow man, the runaway slave in the canebrake, the woodyard man, or the "pirooter"—that degenerate heir, dwarfed to a parasite, of the terrible, earlier-day land-pirates and river-wolves of Plum Point and Crow's Nest Island? To such sorts, self-described as human snapping-turtles and alligators, her peacock show of innumerable lights was the jewelled crown of the only civilization they knew, knowing it only with the same aloofness with which they knew the stars. She woke them with the flutter of her wheels as of winged feet and passed like a goddess using the river's points and islands for stepping-stones, her bosom wrapped in a self-communion that gave no least hint of its intolerable load of grief and strife.
Not until she entered the great bend of Vicksburg did she once come into contrast with anything that could in any degree diminish her regal supremacy. There, as day was breaking, she entered the deep shadow of the southernmost "Walnut Hill." The town on its crest was two hundred feet above her lower deck, and the stiff Yazoo squire, his kindly brother-in-law and sister and the Vicksburg merchant and his wife, waiting down there while she slowed up to the wharf-boat at its foot to let them and others off, were proud of the bluff and of the two miles of sister hills hid by it and the night. Even overproud they were. The two husbands and wives silently wished for that lover of wonders, the sleeping Ramsey, that they might enjoy her enjoyment of the sight, who, though from exalted Natchez, never had beheld so vast an eminence or a city stuck up quite so high.
But Ramsey, far removed in her new, sweet-smelling berth, did not stir from a slumber into which she was throwing all the weight of an overloaded experience. She was paying large back taxes to sleep and had become so immersed in the transaction that her mother's rising, dressing, and stealing away lifted, this time, not one of her eyelashes. In not a sigh or motion did she respond to the long, quaking, world-filling roar of theVotaress'swhistle, nor to John Courteney's tolling of her great bell, nor to the jingle of lesser bells below, nor to any stopping or reversing or new going ahead of her wheels either for landing or for backing out and straightening up the river again. She slept on though these were the very Walnut Hills of her uncle Dan's and Phyllis's dark story; persevered in sleep though John Courteney's son, her profoundest marvel, was once more up and out, with the story still on his heart and "a-happmin' yit." It was one of its happenings that, very naturally, though quite unreasonably, he begrudged the sleeper's absence from texas roof and pilot-house.
TheVotaresswas under full headway, with Vicksburg astern, Watson again at the wheel and the captain in his chair. The most northerly of the Walnut Hills were on the starboard bow. Beyond them the sun, rising into thunder-clouds, poured a dusty-yellow light over the tops of their almost unbroken woods, here and there brightening with a strange vividness the tilled fields and white homestead and slave quarters of some noted plantation. Between the hills and the river lay a mile's breadth or more of densely forested swamp, or "bottom," swarming with reptiles great and small, abounding in deer, bear, and panther, and from which, though the buffalo had been long banished, the wolf was not yet gone. On the skylight roof, close "abaft the bell," as Ramsey would have said, stood the commodore and Hugh. They had just met there and after a casual word or so Hugh was about to say something requiring an effort, when they were joined by the exhorter.
"Mawnin', gentle-men," he said. "Now, what you reckon them-ah po' Gawd-fo'-saken'd Eu-rope-ians down-stahs air a-thinkin' to theyse'v's whilst they view this-yeh lan'scape o'? D'you reckon they eveh, ev'm in they dreams o' heav'm, see sich
"'Sweet fiel's beyond the swellin' floodStand deck' in livin' green'?
"'Sweet fiel's beyond the swellin' floodStand deck' in livin' green'?
"'Sweet fiel's beyond the swellin' flood
Stand deck' in livin' green'?
"I tell you, gentle-men, as sho' as man made the city an' Gawd made the country, he made this-yeh country last, when he'd got his hand in! You see that-ah house an' cedah grove on yan rise? Well, that's the old 'Good Luck Plantation.' Gid Hayle 'uz bawn thah. His fatheh went to Gawd f'om thah an' lef' it to Dan, the pilot, what 'uz lost on theQua'—Hell! listen at me! As efyoudidn't know that, which ev'y sight o' you stahts folks a-talkin' about it! But, Lawd! what a country this-yeh 'Azoo Delta is, to be sho'! Fo' craps! All this-yeh Mis'sippi Riveh, you mowt say, fo'm Cairo down, an' th' 'Azoo fo' the top-rail! Fo' craps—an' the money-makin'est craps! An' jest as much fo' game! Not pokeh but wile game; fo'-footen beasts afteh they kind an' fowl afteh they kind. An' ef a country's great fo' crapsan'game, what mo' kin it be great faw what ain't pyo' Babylonian vanity an' Eu-rope-ian stinch?"
The commodore admitted that game was a good thing and that crops were even better.
"No, sir-ee! Game comes fust! Man makes the craps but Gawd made the game! It come fust when it fust come an' it comes fust yit! Lawd A'mighty! who wouldn't drutheh hunt than plough, ef he could hev his druthehs? But the game ain't what it wuz, not ev'm in this-yeh 'Azoo country an' not ev'm o' the feathe'd kind. Oh, wile turkey, o' co'se, they here yit, by thousan's, an' wile goose, an' duck, an' teal, by hund'eds o' thousan's, an' wile pigeon, clouds of 'em, 'at dahkened the noonday sun. Reckon you see' 'em do that, ain't you? I see' it this ve'y season. But, now, take the pelikin! if game is a fah' name fo' him—aw heh, as the case may be; which that bird—nine foot f'm tip to tip, the white ones—use' to be as common on this riveh as cuckle-burrs in a sheep's tail!" The jester laughed, or, more strictly, exhaled his mirth from the roof of a wide-spread mouth in a long hiss that would have been more like an angered alligator's if alligators used fine-cut tobacco. It was addressed to the commodore; for Hugh, his grandfather's conscious inferior in human charity, had turned the squarest back—for its height—aboard theVotaress, to gaze on a wonderful sight in the eastern sky. The exhorter resumed:
"Why, I ain't see' a pelikin sence I use' to flatboat down to Orleans—f'om Honey Islan' an' th' 'Azoo City. 'Pelikin in the wildeh-ness,' says the holy book, but they 'can't stan' the wildeh-ness!' They plumb gone!—vamoost!—down to the Gulf!—what few ain't been shot!" He grew indignant. "An' whahfo' shot? Faw noth'n'! Jeemany-crackies! gentle-men, it makes my blood bile an' my bile go sour! Ain't no bounty on pelikins. Dead pelikins ain't useful—naw awnamental—naw instructive, an' much less they don't tas'e good. No, suh, they jess shot in pyo' devil-mentby awngawdly damn fools—same as them on this boat all day 'istiddy a-poppin' they pistols at ev'y live thing they see'—fo' no damn' reason in the heab'ms above aw the earth beneath aw the watehs undeh the earth—Lawd! it mighty nigh makes me swah! An' I feel the heab'mly call—seein' as that-ah tub-shape' Methodis' bishoph-ain'tfeel it—fo' to tell you, commodo', you-all hadn't ought allowed that hell-fi'ud nonsense on Gawd's holy day."
Even to his grandfather's response Hugh paid no visible attention. The eastern sky had become such a picture that down forward at the break of the deck John Courteney rose eagerly from his chair and looked back and up to be sure that his son was one of its spectators. Yes, Hugh was just casting a like glance to him and now turned to invite the notice of his grandfather. The thunder-clouds had so encompassed the sun that its rays burst through them almost exclusively in one wide crater, crimsoning, bronzing, and gilding their vaporous and ever-changing walls. Thence they spread earthward, heavenward, leaving remoter masses to writhe darkly on each other and themselves, in and out, in and in, cloaking this hill in blue shadow, bathing that one in green light, while from a watery fastness somewhere hid in the depth of the forested swamp under the hills, some long-lost bend of the Mississippi or cut-off of the Yazoo, rose into the flood of beams an innumerable immaculate swarm of giant cranes. Half were white as silver, half were black as jet, and from moment to moment each jet magically turned to silver, each silver to jet, as on slowly pulsing wings they wove a labyrinthian way through their own multitude with never a clash of pinion on pinion, up, down, athwart and around, up, down, and around again, now raven black across the sun and now silver and snow against the cloud.
An awed voice broke the stillness and old Joy stood a modest step back from Hugh's side with rapt gaze on hill and sky.
XXXIIITWINS AND TEXAS TENDER
"Sign f'om de Lawd!" droned the old woman. "It's de souls o' de saints in de tribilatioms o' de worl'!"But explanation was poor tribute to such beauty. Hugh glanced away to his father, then around to the commodore, up to Watson, and back again upon the spectacle. In a tone of remote allusion the grandfather spoke: "One wants a choice partnership for a sight like that."Hugh cast back a sudden frown but it softened promptly to a smile which old Joy thought wonderfully sweet."Late sleepers," persisted the commodore, "know what they gain but not what they lose.""Naw yit," audibly soliloquized the nurse, "what dey makes de early riseh lose." She added a soft high-treble "humph!" and gave herself a smile at least as sweet as Hugh's, which he repeated to her as he said:"Good morning, auntie."She courtesied. "Mawnin', suh." They need not have been more cordial had they just signed a great treaty.TheVotaress, swinging westward, left the picture behind, and the neglected exhorter, caring far less for cranes and clouds than for pelicans and sinners, reopened, this time on Hugh: "But that's anotheh thing 'at rises my bristles, ev'm ef it don't the bishop's.""What rises them?" asked the solemn Hugh, the commodore's attention wandering."Shell I spit it out? Wall, it's folks a-proj-eckin' togetheh—church membehs an' non-membehs a-proj-eckin'togetheh—fo' to drownd Gawd A'mighty's chas-tisementsin the devil's delights.Youknow they a-layin' fo' to do that on this boat this ve'y evenin'. You know they a-proj-eckin' fo' to raise filthy lucre by fiddlin' an' play-actin' an' a-singin' o' worl'ly songs an', to top all, a-dayncin'!—right oveh the heads o' the sick an' dyin', my Gawd! You know that, don't you?""Yes, I'm mixed up in it.""An' they a-doin' it fo' what? Fo' no betteh reason 'an to he'p them-ah damn' ovehwhelmin' furrinehs to escape the righteous judg-mentso' the Lawd! Young brotheh, my name is Jawn. Jawn the Babtiss, I am, an' as sich I p'otess! An' also an' mo'oveh I p'otess ag'in' any mo' leadin's f'om them-ah 'Piscopaliam play-actohs, an' still mo' f'om that-ah bodacious brick-top gal o' Gid Hayle's. Which she made opem spote o'myleadin's in 'istiddy's meet'n'! An' o' co'se! havin' a popish motheh.""Oh!—my!—Lawd!" gasped Joy, and the commodore had begun to meet protest with protest, when Hugh touched him."This is too small for you. May I——?""Take it," said the grandfather and turned inquiringly to the nurse."Yaas, suh," she hurried to say, "my mist'ess ax de honoh to see you at de stateroom o' Mahs' Basile."Meantime Hugh answered the complainant: "My friend, that young lady—you mustn't call her anything else again—made no sport of you whatever.""Oh, dat she didn't, boss!" put in old Joy, breaking off from her talk with the commodore."Honestly, sir," continued Hugh, "I was afraid some one would, but I happened to see her from first to last, and——""Happ'm'd! The hell you happ'm'd! Yo' eyes 'uz deadsoton heh when they'd ought to been upraise' in prah!"Hugh laughed—a laugh so hearty it might have been the brick-top's own. The texas tender enjoyed it as he bore a tray of dishes from the room of the twins. Down beyond the bell it drew the father's smile and up at the wheel the stoical gaze of Watson. Half of it was for the exhorter and half for a newcomer at tardy sight of whom the exhorter paled, certain that he had been overheard."Oh!" he cried, "I ain't meant no offence to nobody naw tuck none!" and eagerly followed the commodore's beckon to go below with him and the nurse. Hugh, still smiling, met the blazing stare of Julian Hayle."Good morning," he said, while Hayle was inquiring:"May I again ask of you a word in private?""Oh, this is private enough," said Hugh. "Every private word I've had with you so far, or with your—coterie, has been so unsatisfactory to you—and them, and so tiresome to everybody, I can't see why you should want another. My friend——""We are not friends, sir.""Well, then, let's make friends. Here's my hand. I'm utterly ashamed of this miserable little spat."Hayle folded his arms. "You'll find it life-size before we're done.""Nonsense! it's too small for words, private or otherwise. Let's end it, for that reason if for no better.""That's not your reason, sir. You have another.""Yes, I simply can't quarrel with you.""You—crawling—poltroon!"Hugh's smile vanished at last. He gulped as though a wave had gone over him. But he remembered his father. Beyond doubt his father had heard. He glanced down to him, and what he saw was worth a year of commonplace experience. The father had heard, yet he sat at ease, his knees crossed and his gaze out forward on the boat's course. Watson—but what could Watson matter then? Hugh's eyes burned big on Hayle, his voice deepened, his words came slow. "We can't fight here and now. I can only put you ashore. Don't make me do that. There's trouble enough on this boat as it is. You're having your share. Mr. Hayle, I fear—though I don't know—that Basile has the cholera.""Damn him and it! You wouldn't fight me if you could.""True.""Why? On your father's account—and his father's?""On everybody's. Your own father's. Your mother's.""My sister's?" The question was a threatening sneer."Yes, sir." The breakfast bell rang merrily below and Hugh turned to leave. Julian blazed out in curses:"I forbid you 'that young lady's' company henceforth!""And that's the private word you had for me?""Yes, damn you! I know who sat up late last night. If you do it again I'll shoot you right on this boat!""My private word for you, Mr. Hayle, isn't as public as that. Only I and the texas tender know it.""Most fitting partnership!""No, it was entirely his own enterprise. While you and your brother were getting your information from him he got your weapons from both of you. I have them in the clerk's safe."
"Sign f'om de Lawd!" droned the old woman. "It's de souls o' de saints in de tribilatioms o' de worl'!"
But explanation was poor tribute to such beauty. Hugh glanced away to his father, then around to the commodore, up to Watson, and back again upon the spectacle. In a tone of remote allusion the grandfather spoke: "One wants a choice partnership for a sight like that."
Hugh cast back a sudden frown but it softened promptly to a smile which old Joy thought wonderfully sweet.
"Late sleepers," persisted the commodore, "know what they gain but not what they lose."
"Naw yit," audibly soliloquized the nurse, "what dey makes de early riseh lose." She added a soft high-treble "humph!" and gave herself a smile at least as sweet as Hugh's, which he repeated to her as he said:
"Good morning, auntie."
She courtesied. "Mawnin', suh." They need not have been more cordial had they just signed a great treaty.
TheVotaress, swinging westward, left the picture behind, and the neglected exhorter, caring far less for cranes and clouds than for pelicans and sinners, reopened, this time on Hugh: "But that's anotheh thing 'at rises my bristles, ev'm ef it don't the bishop's."
"What rises them?" asked the solemn Hugh, the commodore's attention wandering.
"Shell I spit it out? Wall, it's folks a-proj-eckin' togetheh—church membehs an' non-membehs a-proj-eckin'togetheh—fo' to drownd Gawd A'mighty's chas-tisementsin the devil's delights.Youknow they a-layin' fo' to do that on this boat this ve'y evenin'. You know they a-proj-eckin' fo' to raise filthy lucre by fiddlin' an' play-actin' an' a-singin' o' worl'ly songs an', to top all, a-dayncin'!—right oveh the heads o' the sick an' dyin', my Gawd! You know that, don't you?"
"Yes, I'm mixed up in it."
"An' they a-doin' it fo' what? Fo' no betteh reason 'an to he'p them-ah damn' ovehwhelmin' furrinehs to escape the righteous judg-mentso' the Lawd! Young brotheh, my name is Jawn. Jawn the Babtiss, I am, an' as sich I p'otess! An' also an' mo'oveh I p'otess ag'in' any mo' leadin's f'om them-ah 'Piscopaliam play-actohs, an' still mo' f'om that-ah bodacious brick-top gal o' Gid Hayle's. Which she made opem spote o'myleadin's in 'istiddy's meet'n'! An' o' co'se! havin' a popish motheh."
"Oh!—my!—Lawd!" gasped Joy, and the commodore had begun to meet protest with protest, when Hugh touched him.
"This is too small for you. May I——?"
"Take it," said the grandfather and turned inquiringly to the nurse.
"Yaas, suh," she hurried to say, "my mist'ess ax de honoh to see you at de stateroom o' Mahs' Basile."
Meantime Hugh answered the complainant: "My friend, that young lady—you mustn't call her anything else again—made no sport of you whatever."
"Oh, dat she didn't, boss!" put in old Joy, breaking off from her talk with the commodore.
"Honestly, sir," continued Hugh, "I was afraid some one would, but I happened to see her from first to last, and——"
"Happ'm'd! The hell you happ'm'd! Yo' eyes 'uz deadsoton heh when they'd ought to been upraise' in prah!"
Hugh laughed—a laugh so hearty it might have been the brick-top's own. The texas tender enjoyed it as he bore a tray of dishes from the room of the twins. Down beyond the bell it drew the father's smile and up at the wheel the stoical gaze of Watson. Half of it was for the exhorter and half for a newcomer at tardy sight of whom the exhorter paled, certain that he had been overheard.
"Oh!" he cried, "I ain't meant no offence to nobody naw tuck none!" and eagerly followed the commodore's beckon to go below with him and the nurse. Hugh, still smiling, met the blazing stare of Julian Hayle.
"Good morning," he said, while Hayle was inquiring:
"May I again ask of you a word in private?"
"Oh, this is private enough," said Hugh. "Every private word I've had with you so far, or with your—coterie, has been so unsatisfactory to you—and them, and so tiresome to everybody, I can't see why you should want another. My friend——"
"We are not friends, sir."
"Well, then, let's make friends. Here's my hand. I'm utterly ashamed of this miserable little spat."
Hayle folded his arms. "You'll find it life-size before we're done."
"Nonsense! it's too small for words, private or otherwise. Let's end it, for that reason if for no better."
"That's not your reason, sir. You have another."
"Yes, I simply can't quarrel with you."
"You—crawling—poltroon!"
Hugh's smile vanished at last. He gulped as though a wave had gone over him. But he remembered his father. Beyond doubt his father had heard. He glanced down to him, and what he saw was worth a year of commonplace experience. The father had heard, yet he sat at ease, his knees crossed and his gaze out forward on the boat's course. Watson—but what could Watson matter then? Hugh's eyes burned big on Hayle, his voice deepened, his words came slow. "We can't fight here and now. I can only put you ashore. Don't make me do that. There's trouble enough on this boat as it is. You're having your share. Mr. Hayle, I fear—though I don't know—that Basile has the cholera."
"Damn him and it! You wouldn't fight me if you could."
"True."
"Why? On your father's account—and his father's?"
"On everybody's. Your own father's. Your mother's."
"My sister's?" The question was a threatening sneer.
"Yes, sir." The breakfast bell rang merrily below and Hugh turned to leave. Julian blazed out in curses:
"I forbid you 'that young lady's' company henceforth!"
"And that's the private word you had for me?"
"Yes, damn you! I know who sat up late last night. If you do it again I'll shoot you right on this boat!"
"My private word for you, Mr. Hayle, isn't as public as that. Only I and the texas tender know it."
"Most fitting partnership!"
"No, it was entirely his own enterprise. While you and your brother were getting your information from him he got your weapons from both of you. I have them in the clerk's safe."
XXXIVTHE PEACEMAKERS
Some four of theVotaress's"family," one seated, three standing at ease, were allowing their mild, slow conversation its haphazard way under barely enough constraint to hold it in the channel of discretion. It drifted as unpretentiously as a raft or flatboat, now and then merely floating without progress, like a floating alligator; that is, with one small eye imperceptibly open to every point of the compass.He who sat was the first clerk, a man of thirty-seven or so, and therefore, as age then counted, fairly started on the decline of life. He occupied the high stool in the clerk's office, his limp back against its standing desk. Nearest him the second clerk, standing, leaned on an elbow thrown out upon the desk and rested one foot on a rung of the stool. A second clerk might do that; a third or "mud" clerk would hardly have made so free. The youthful mud clerk, with his hat under his folded arms, leaned on the jamb of a door that let back into the clerks' stateroom. Opposite him the youngest of the four, latest come among them, stood out in the cabin and hung in over the broad window counter, across which the office did business with the world. Watson's "cub pilot" he was, on the sick list, thin and weak with swamp-fever.The forenoon watch was half gone. The boat was fluttering along at high speed under a bright but fickle sky, and the clerks and the "cub" hardly needed to glance out the nearest larboard window to know that she was already turning northward into a pleasant piece of river called Nine Mile Reach. A certain Point Lookout was some five miles behind in the east, and the town of Providence, negligibly small, with Lake Providence, an old cut-off, hid in the woods behind it, was close ahead. One of the number mentioned the boat's failure during the night to make the miles expected of her, but the four agreed that the cause was not any lack of speed power but an overplus of landings below Vicksburg—two being for burials—and a long delay at Vicksburg itself, providing for the sick.This explanation, the second clerk said, had been as gratifying to the planter of Milliken's Bend and his "lady" as their not having to be called up before day. They had taken breakfast in the general company, which, with the commodore at one end of the cabin and Hugh at the other, had sat down when Old River and the mouth of the Yazoo were on the starboard bow, and had risen while passing My Wife's Island. Finally they had gone ashore in great elation, thanking Hugh with high voices and fervent hand-shakings, and his father with wavings from the bank to the roof, for the "most delightful trip anybody ever made"; careless as infants of the hundreds of strangers gazing on them, both native and alien, both woe-stricken and self-content, and, even when the great wheels were backing the boat away, calling fond messages to Hugh for the still invisible "Miss Ramsey" as if she were in his exclusive keeping and all those strangers were trees.So recounted the second clerk, not to criticise such innocent disdain of the public eye and ear—to him an every-day sight—but with a feeling for the picturesque and in mild humor making the point that such messages, so given, were hardly calculated to make life easier for Hugh. The mud clerk and the cub pilot grunted their accord yet privately envied Hugh. To be message bearer to that young lady would have been rapture to either of them under whatever hardness or peril of life, the more the better. Oddly enough, with Milliken's Bend now forty miles astern the messages had not been delivered."No fault of his," said the first clerk, the second said no, and the mud clerk and the cub loyally echoed them. For they knew, at least the three clerks knew, always knew, not by flat inquiry but by trained perceptions and the alligator's eye, whatever was going on in each and every part of the boat. Indeed, the boat's news naturally flowed to them; flowed to and ran forth again from them, aerated and cleansed, as normally as blood to and from the breast of a strong man. By the sound of the steam they knew the water was right in the boilers. By the rhythm of the machinery they knew all was right in the engine room. They could have said, nearly enough, how soon the boat would have to stop again for wood. To them the quiet of the populous boiler deck, where nearly every man sat reading some stale newspaper of Louisville, Saint Louis, or Cincinnati—brought aboard from the Vicksburg wharf-boat—was informational, witnessing a general resigned admission that there was already "trouble enough." Of three notables not there they knew that one, the bishop, was in his berth, very weary, and that the senator and the general had been for some time with Hayle's twins. They could have greeted every cabin passenger by name. They knew who were filling the places lately vacated at the ladies' table, whose was each ubiquitous child selling tickets for the appointed "show," and whose each private servant, however rarely seen: not such as old Joy merely, but the senator's black Cato, the general's yellow Tom, Mrs. Gilmore's theatrically handsome Harriet, or the nearly as white Dora of the young lady from Napoleon. And they knew well that the non-delivery of those messages was no fault of Hugh's.Miss Ramsey was up, yes; but she had breakfasted in seclusion and was then in a small under-cabin for ladies' maids, close beneath the main one, rehearsing with Mrs. Gilmore and others. Gilmore had been coaching them but was now momentarily out on the boiler deck. Through the extensive glass of the cabin's front they could see him standing before a knot of men: John the Baptist and the man with the eagle eye and the man with the eye of a stallion and the man who knew so slap-bang that the Hayles and Courteneys had all but locked horns when theQuakeressburned. They were the only exponents of unrest out there and only the actor wore an air both spirited and kind. No one in the office openly kept an eye on the outer group. In there the gossip lingered on Hugh. Hugh had plenty, it was agreed, of the Courteney stuff and something besides which these four hoped was the very thing with which to meet this new phase so plainly at hand in the Hayle-Courteney contest.Suddenly the first clerk looked straight out on Gilmore, so obviously at bay, and murmured to the cub pilot: "Go, bring him." While the cub went, the clerk spoke on. Hugh, he said, would one day be the best-liked of his name.In kindly dissent the second clerk shook his head, but the first would have it so. The liking might be slow coming, he allowed, because of Hugh's oddities, but in the end men would like even the oddities.The mud clerk named one as if he liked it: "When he's by himself he's got the iron-est phiz——"The second clerk laughed his appreciation. "And when he's poked up," he said, "it gets ironer and ironer.""It'll need to mighty soon," observed the first clerk."When he runs into Gid Hayle," said the second.The actor came. His pleased manner was more thankful than inquiring and he insisted on remaining outside the window shelf with the cub."Mr. Gilmore," said the first clerk gravely, "we thought you might condescend to inspect our ceiling decorations through fresh foliage."The player looked puzzled an instant but a smell of mint from the bar cleared his mental vision. Yet again he declined. Later in the day he shouldn't be so coy, he admitted, but one oughtn't to take too long a running start for his jump into bed."No, hemightget there too soon," said the clerk. "My boys, sir, want to ask you a riddle. You know Gid Hayle. How can his daughter, here, be just like him for all the world and yet those twins be just like him for all the same identical world, too?""Well put!" was the prompt rejoinder. "My wife and I have been toying with that riddle these twenty-four hours. Those brothers are Gideon Hayle's sons if ever a man had sons; that daughter is his from the ground up; yet the two and the one are as unlike as night and noon."The clerks and cub pilot agreed so approvingly that the actor, lover of lines, was inspired to go on at more length. He remarked, in effect, that he had never seen so striking an instance of a parent's natural traits growing into—blemishes—in one inheritor and into graces in another. Yet to know Gideon Hayle was to read the riddle. As quick to anger as his sons, as full of mirth as his daughter; open-hearted, wrong-headed, generous, tyrannous, valorous, contemptuous of all book wisdom yet an incessant, keen inquirer with a fantastical explanation of his own for everything in nature, science, politics, or religion. Implacable in his prejudices, he——"Yes," interrupted the first clerk, with amazing irrelevancy, "but a man of Henry Clay's experience ought to have known better. Kossuth is a gentleman who—well, general, how are you now? Mr. Gilmore, you know the general? Senator, you know Mr. Gilmore?""Assuredly!" The condescending senator had known Mr. Gilmore, "a day by contact but long by fame."The general was civil but not suave. He remembered the player's hard names for the committee's dead scheme. "Taking care of Henry Clay, too, sir?" he asked him. "With so many pleasanter cares"—that meant Ramsey—"you might let Henry Clay take care of himself.""That's something," put in the second clerk, flushing defensively, while the senator, with cigar cocked one way and his silk hat another, drew Gilmore aside, "that's something Henry Clay never does.""Right, young man. He merely tries. Th-there's no one in the nation has t-tried harder or f-failed worse!"The youth turned to his work at the high desk. "Sir," said the general to the first clerk, who rose, "the senator and I have been up to your texas——""Contrary to orders," mildly said the first clerk."I admit it, sir, but our intentions were only th-the k-kindest. It seems to us, sir, or to me—us or me, sir, as you will—that th-those sons of our old friend Hayle are not getting justice.""They ought to be mighty glad of that, general.""S-s-sir, they'd rather have it! We admit, of course,—we or I—I, if you prefer, sir, or if the senator prefers—I admit they are not unbiassed.""No, I admit they're not.""Th-they are supe-perbly stiff-necked and illogical young barons from four centuries back, sir, without a f-f-fault that isn't a v-v-virtue overdrawn—or out of date."The speaker turned to the actor and senator and they to him: "If those boys have the pride of L-l-lucifer, Mr. Gilmore, they have also his intrep-idity. Th-they may be as high-headed as giraffes, sir, but they're as s-s-straightf-f-forward as a charging bull! Mr. clerk, the splendid surge of their imp-pulses should excuse their f-f-foibles even if their s-s-souls werenotwr-wri-writhing under the lash of a new whip on old sores, sir.""Will you just make that a little clearer, general?""I will," softly put in the senator—"by your leave, general?"With limp majesty the general waved permission."All for peace, however," said the senator smilingly to the clerk. "There's been enough strife.""Never saw so much aboard boat," said the clerk."Well,"—statesman and clerk laid elbows on the shelf and dropped their voices while the actor and the general drew a step aside,—"this thing can be settled only by the right friends and it's now or never." The two exchanged a look but the clerk was mute and the senator spoke on: "You've heard of Dan Hayle—and the girl Phyllis, hmm?""I was first clerk on theQuakeresswhen she burned.""Why, so youwas. These twins believe, bitterly, that in that mysterious disaster all due search for their uncle was neglected to save the captain's son and that the girl and Dan Hayle were never fully accounted for.""Shucks! Why—Dan—it was I found Dan's body.""Yes, but they call it an outrage for him to have been there at all; to give him the wheel and take her aboard on the same trip.""Law'! what did she count, with him about to marry?""Why, they think that for that very reason John Courteney let his wife—from Philadelphia, you know—abolitionist—bring the girl and Dan together, hoping he'd either set her free or else skip the wedding and somehow disgrace the whole Hayle family. Just those boys' guess but—they believe it. What theyseeis a Hayle killed and no one killed for him.""Oh, we settled that with their dad ten years ago.""They say not. And, really, you know, some of the liveliest feuds along this river are founded on less cause. Gid Hayle, they claim, couldn't bring the Courteneys to law at the time because the only men he had to back him were his two in-laws. Now these twins are men and they feel honor-bound to throw down—no, to take up—the gage, thrown down to them every hour they've been on this boat.""Shoo! They've been treated only too well.""Tactfully, do you think?""Depends on what you call tact. Ordinary tact's the worst thing you could throw at 'em." The clerk spoke with both eyes on the general and the actor. His fellow clerk, second clerk, had nudged him. The general was raising his voice to the actor."They f-forbid your lady to chaperon their sister, since you both, last evening, all-llowed young Courteney to give her his account of the b-urning of theQuakeress.""General!" the smiling senator cautioned him, "privately, if you please! more privately!"But the soldier persisted. "Th-they even suspect you, sir, of s-s-piriting off to Canada their s-s-lave p-roperty, missing after that event.""Why, gentlemen," began the player, looking very professional but also very handsome, and with a flash of annoyance only when he noticed that the exhorter had joined the group, "I never in my—nonsense! fantastical nonsense! Why, I'll be—I'll see you later! At present, as I've already said, I'm overdue at that rehearsal.""Yes, Mr. Gilmore," said the first clerk, "you are.""A moment," interposed the senator. "Purely in the interest of peace, Mr. Gilmore——""Oh, senator," the actor amiably laughed, "I don't question your good-will, or the general's; but you don't know, either of you, the interest of peace when you run against it—pardon! I take that back. My annoyance, at quite another thing, flew off the handle. I take it back. Excuse me, I'll make it a point to see you later." The three bowed. As he started away the exhorter blocked his path."Excuseme," said the zealot. "Fust tell us: Ef yemowtsperit a niggeh off to Canady would ye aw wouldn't ye?"For an instant the player stood mute and then he said only, in a preoccupied tone: "Please let me pass." But at the same time he laid his unexpected left hand lightly on the questioner and by some stage trick sent him stumbling aside along a line of chairs and toppling to the floor. The cub and the younger clerks had him up in a twinkling, while a dozen men appeared from the boiler deck as if by magic, and the player walked away down the cabin."Now, no more noise here," said the second clerk to the lifted man, restraining both his arms. "No, you stay right here. He didn't do a thing to you, you just stepped a little too spry and sort o' tripped up."From his window shelf the first clerk, in the tail of his eye, saw the zealot and his group disperse while he, the clerk, talked laughingly to the soldier on one subject and gravely to the statesman on another."You can't challenge a man, general," he said, "who apologizes for calling you a poor peacemaker.""By—! s-sir, I can and I sh-shall!" was the retort.The clerk ignored it. He and the senator bent heads together again. "No," he said, "Hugh only told him hefearedit was Basile. In fact, it wasn't. It isn't.""Who is it, then? It's a passenger and a bad case.""Will you keep it dark—by the patient's own request—till the show's over to-night?"The senator nodded. The two heads came closer. The general scorned to listen. The name did not reach him."Jove!" gasped the senator. "Come, general." They went.The first clerk turned to the second clerk's elbow at the high desk, saying dryly: "They came to demand those shooting-irons and couldn't muster the brass."
Some four of theVotaress's"family," one seated, three standing at ease, were allowing their mild, slow conversation its haphazard way under barely enough constraint to hold it in the channel of discretion. It drifted as unpretentiously as a raft or flatboat, now and then merely floating without progress, like a floating alligator; that is, with one small eye imperceptibly open to every point of the compass.
He who sat was the first clerk, a man of thirty-seven or so, and therefore, as age then counted, fairly started on the decline of life. He occupied the high stool in the clerk's office, his limp back against its standing desk. Nearest him the second clerk, standing, leaned on an elbow thrown out upon the desk and rested one foot on a rung of the stool. A second clerk might do that; a third or "mud" clerk would hardly have made so free. The youthful mud clerk, with his hat under his folded arms, leaned on the jamb of a door that let back into the clerks' stateroom. Opposite him the youngest of the four, latest come among them, stood out in the cabin and hung in over the broad window counter, across which the office did business with the world. Watson's "cub pilot" he was, on the sick list, thin and weak with swamp-fever.
The forenoon watch was half gone. The boat was fluttering along at high speed under a bright but fickle sky, and the clerks and the "cub" hardly needed to glance out the nearest larboard window to know that she was already turning northward into a pleasant piece of river called Nine Mile Reach. A certain Point Lookout was some five miles behind in the east, and the town of Providence, negligibly small, with Lake Providence, an old cut-off, hid in the woods behind it, was close ahead. One of the number mentioned the boat's failure during the night to make the miles expected of her, but the four agreed that the cause was not any lack of speed power but an overplus of landings below Vicksburg—two being for burials—and a long delay at Vicksburg itself, providing for the sick.
This explanation, the second clerk said, had been as gratifying to the planter of Milliken's Bend and his "lady" as their not having to be called up before day. They had taken breakfast in the general company, which, with the commodore at one end of the cabin and Hugh at the other, had sat down when Old River and the mouth of the Yazoo were on the starboard bow, and had risen while passing My Wife's Island. Finally they had gone ashore in great elation, thanking Hugh with high voices and fervent hand-shakings, and his father with wavings from the bank to the roof, for the "most delightful trip anybody ever made"; careless as infants of the hundreds of strangers gazing on them, both native and alien, both woe-stricken and self-content, and, even when the great wheels were backing the boat away, calling fond messages to Hugh for the still invisible "Miss Ramsey" as if she were in his exclusive keeping and all those strangers were trees.
So recounted the second clerk, not to criticise such innocent disdain of the public eye and ear—to him an every-day sight—but with a feeling for the picturesque and in mild humor making the point that such messages, so given, were hardly calculated to make life easier for Hugh. The mud clerk and the cub pilot grunted their accord yet privately envied Hugh. To be message bearer to that young lady would have been rapture to either of them under whatever hardness or peril of life, the more the better. Oddly enough, with Milliken's Bend now forty miles astern the messages had not been delivered.
"No fault of his," said the first clerk, the second said no, and the mud clerk and the cub loyally echoed them. For they knew, at least the three clerks knew, always knew, not by flat inquiry but by trained perceptions and the alligator's eye, whatever was going on in each and every part of the boat. Indeed, the boat's news naturally flowed to them; flowed to and ran forth again from them, aerated and cleansed, as normally as blood to and from the breast of a strong man. By the sound of the steam they knew the water was right in the boilers. By the rhythm of the machinery they knew all was right in the engine room. They could have said, nearly enough, how soon the boat would have to stop again for wood. To them the quiet of the populous boiler deck, where nearly every man sat reading some stale newspaper of Louisville, Saint Louis, or Cincinnati—brought aboard from the Vicksburg wharf-boat—was informational, witnessing a general resigned admission that there was already "trouble enough." Of three notables not there they knew that one, the bishop, was in his berth, very weary, and that the senator and the general had been for some time with Hayle's twins. They could have greeted every cabin passenger by name. They knew who were filling the places lately vacated at the ladies' table, whose was each ubiquitous child selling tickets for the appointed "show," and whose each private servant, however rarely seen: not such as old Joy merely, but the senator's black Cato, the general's yellow Tom, Mrs. Gilmore's theatrically handsome Harriet, or the nearly as white Dora of the young lady from Napoleon. And they knew well that the non-delivery of those messages was no fault of Hugh's.
Miss Ramsey was up, yes; but she had breakfasted in seclusion and was then in a small under-cabin for ladies' maids, close beneath the main one, rehearsing with Mrs. Gilmore and others. Gilmore had been coaching them but was now momentarily out on the boiler deck. Through the extensive glass of the cabin's front they could see him standing before a knot of men: John the Baptist and the man with the eagle eye and the man with the eye of a stallion and the man who knew so slap-bang that the Hayles and Courteneys had all but locked horns when theQuakeressburned. They were the only exponents of unrest out there and only the actor wore an air both spirited and kind. No one in the office openly kept an eye on the outer group. In there the gossip lingered on Hugh. Hugh had plenty, it was agreed, of the Courteney stuff and something besides which these four hoped was the very thing with which to meet this new phase so plainly at hand in the Hayle-Courteney contest.
Suddenly the first clerk looked straight out on Gilmore, so obviously at bay, and murmured to the cub pilot: "Go, bring him." While the cub went, the clerk spoke on. Hugh, he said, would one day be the best-liked of his name.
In kindly dissent the second clerk shook his head, but the first would have it so. The liking might be slow coming, he allowed, because of Hugh's oddities, but in the end men would like even the oddities.
The mud clerk named one as if he liked it: "When he's by himself he's got the iron-est phiz——"
The second clerk laughed his appreciation. "And when he's poked up," he said, "it gets ironer and ironer."
"It'll need to mighty soon," observed the first clerk.
"When he runs into Gid Hayle," said the second.
The actor came. His pleased manner was more thankful than inquiring and he insisted on remaining outside the window shelf with the cub.
"Mr. Gilmore," said the first clerk gravely, "we thought you might condescend to inspect our ceiling decorations through fresh foliage."
The player looked puzzled an instant but a smell of mint from the bar cleared his mental vision. Yet again he declined. Later in the day he shouldn't be so coy, he admitted, but one oughtn't to take too long a running start for his jump into bed.
"No, hemightget there too soon," said the clerk. "My boys, sir, want to ask you a riddle. You know Gid Hayle. How can his daughter, here, be just like him for all the world and yet those twins be just like him for all the same identical world, too?"
"Well put!" was the prompt rejoinder. "My wife and I have been toying with that riddle these twenty-four hours. Those brothers are Gideon Hayle's sons if ever a man had sons; that daughter is his from the ground up; yet the two and the one are as unlike as night and noon."
The clerks and cub pilot agreed so approvingly that the actor, lover of lines, was inspired to go on at more length. He remarked, in effect, that he had never seen so striking an instance of a parent's natural traits growing into—blemishes—in one inheritor and into graces in another. Yet to know Gideon Hayle was to read the riddle. As quick to anger as his sons, as full of mirth as his daughter; open-hearted, wrong-headed, generous, tyrannous, valorous, contemptuous of all book wisdom yet an incessant, keen inquirer with a fantastical explanation of his own for everything in nature, science, politics, or religion. Implacable in his prejudices, he——
"Yes," interrupted the first clerk, with amazing irrelevancy, "but a man of Henry Clay's experience ought to have known better. Kossuth is a gentleman who—well, general, how are you now? Mr. Gilmore, you know the general? Senator, you know Mr. Gilmore?"
"Assuredly!" The condescending senator had known Mr. Gilmore, "a day by contact but long by fame."
The general was civil but not suave. He remembered the player's hard names for the committee's dead scheme. "Taking care of Henry Clay, too, sir?" he asked him. "With so many pleasanter cares"—that meant Ramsey—"you might let Henry Clay take care of himself."
"That's something," put in the second clerk, flushing defensively, while the senator, with cigar cocked one way and his silk hat another, drew Gilmore aside, "that's something Henry Clay never does."
"Right, young man. He merely tries. Th-there's no one in the nation has t-tried harder or f-failed worse!"
The youth turned to his work at the high desk. "Sir," said the general to the first clerk, who rose, "the senator and I have been up to your texas——"
"Contrary to orders," mildly said the first clerk.
"I admit it, sir, but our intentions were only th-the k-kindest. It seems to us, sir, or to me—us or me, sir, as you will—that th-those sons of our old friend Hayle are not getting justice."
"They ought to be mighty glad of that, general."
"S-s-sir, they'd rather have it! We admit, of course,—we or I—I, if you prefer, sir, or if the senator prefers—I admit they are not unbiassed."
"No, I admit they're not."
"Th-they are supe-perbly stiff-necked and illogical young barons from four centuries back, sir, without a f-f-fault that isn't a v-v-virtue overdrawn—or out of date."
The speaker turned to the actor and senator and they to him: "If those boys have the pride of L-l-lucifer, Mr. Gilmore, they have also his intrep-idity. Th-they may be as high-headed as giraffes, sir, but they're as s-s-straightf-f-forward as a charging bull! Mr. clerk, the splendid surge of their imp-pulses should excuse their f-f-foibles even if their s-s-souls werenotwr-wri-writhing under the lash of a new whip on old sores, sir."
"Will you just make that a little clearer, general?"
"I will," softly put in the senator—"by your leave, general?"
With limp majesty the general waved permission.
"All for peace, however," said the senator smilingly to the clerk. "There's been enough strife."
"Never saw so much aboard boat," said the clerk.
"Well,"—statesman and clerk laid elbows on the shelf and dropped their voices while the actor and the general drew a step aside,—"this thing can be settled only by the right friends and it's now or never." The two exchanged a look but the clerk was mute and the senator spoke on: "You've heard of Dan Hayle—and the girl Phyllis, hmm?"
"I was first clerk on theQuakeresswhen she burned."
"Why, so youwas. These twins believe, bitterly, that in that mysterious disaster all due search for their uncle was neglected to save the captain's son and that the girl and Dan Hayle were never fully accounted for."
"Shucks! Why—Dan—it was I found Dan's body."
"Yes, but they call it an outrage for him to have been there at all; to give him the wheel and take her aboard on the same trip."
"Law'! what did she count, with him about to marry?"
"Why, they think that for that very reason John Courteney let his wife—from Philadelphia, you know—abolitionist—bring the girl and Dan together, hoping he'd either set her free or else skip the wedding and somehow disgrace the whole Hayle family. Just those boys' guess but—they believe it. What theyseeis a Hayle killed and no one killed for him."
"Oh, we settled that with their dad ten years ago."
"They say not. And, really, you know, some of the liveliest feuds along this river are founded on less cause. Gid Hayle, they claim, couldn't bring the Courteneys to law at the time because the only men he had to back him were his two in-laws. Now these twins are men and they feel honor-bound to throw down—no, to take up—the gage, thrown down to them every hour they've been on this boat."
"Shoo! They've been treated only too well."
"Tactfully, do you think?"
"Depends on what you call tact. Ordinary tact's the worst thing you could throw at 'em." The clerk spoke with both eyes on the general and the actor. His fellow clerk, second clerk, had nudged him. The general was raising his voice to the actor.
"They f-forbid your lady to chaperon their sister, since you both, last evening, all-llowed young Courteney to give her his account of the b-urning of theQuakeress."
"General!" the smiling senator cautioned him, "privately, if you please! more privately!"
But the soldier persisted. "Th-they even suspect you, sir, of s-s-piriting off to Canada their s-s-lave p-roperty, missing after that event."
"Why, gentlemen," began the player, looking very professional but also very handsome, and with a flash of annoyance only when he noticed that the exhorter had joined the group, "I never in my—nonsense! fantastical nonsense! Why, I'll be—I'll see you later! At present, as I've already said, I'm overdue at that rehearsal."
"Yes, Mr. Gilmore," said the first clerk, "you are."
"A moment," interposed the senator. "Purely in the interest of peace, Mr. Gilmore——"
"Oh, senator," the actor amiably laughed, "I don't question your good-will, or the general's; but you don't know, either of you, the interest of peace when you run against it—pardon! I take that back. My annoyance, at quite another thing, flew off the handle. I take it back. Excuse me, I'll make it a point to see you later." The three bowed. As he started away the exhorter blocked his path.
"Excuseme," said the zealot. "Fust tell us: Ef yemowtsperit a niggeh off to Canady would ye aw wouldn't ye?"
For an instant the player stood mute and then he said only, in a preoccupied tone: "Please let me pass." But at the same time he laid his unexpected left hand lightly on the questioner and by some stage trick sent him stumbling aside along a line of chairs and toppling to the floor. The cub and the younger clerks had him up in a twinkling, while a dozen men appeared from the boiler deck as if by magic, and the player walked away down the cabin.
"Now, no more noise here," said the second clerk to the lifted man, restraining both his arms. "No, you stay right here. He didn't do a thing to you, you just stepped a little too spry and sort o' tripped up."
From his window shelf the first clerk, in the tail of his eye, saw the zealot and his group disperse while he, the clerk, talked laughingly to the soldier on one subject and gravely to the statesman on another.
"You can't challenge a man, general," he said, "who apologizes for calling you a poor peacemaker."
"By—! s-sir, I can and I sh-shall!" was the retort.
The clerk ignored it. He and the senator bent heads together again. "No," he said, "Hugh only told him hefearedit was Basile. In fact, it wasn't. It isn't."
"Who is it, then? It's a passenger and a bad case."
"Will you keep it dark—by the patient's own request—till the show's over to-night?"
The senator nodded. The two heads came closer. The general scorned to listen. The name did not reach him.
"Jove!" gasped the senator. "Come, general." They went.
The first clerk turned to the second clerk's elbow at the high desk, saying dryly: "They came to demand those shooting-irons and couldn't muster the brass."
XXXVUNSETTLED WEATHER
Again theVotaresswas passing the Westwood and again was but a short mile behind theAntelope.Led by Ramsey, the amateur players, including Hugh, had stopped rehearsing and were on the skylight roof, gathered about the commodore, the Gilmores, and the bell. In their company, though below them on the forward hurricane deck, the first mate leaned bulkily against the roof on which they stood. It was his watch. Ned was up at the wheel.As early as the evening before, a good hundred and fifty miles back down the river, theAntelope, it will be remembered, had been close on theWestwood'sheels. So Gilmore reminded his wife. So Hugh needlessly reminded Ramsey. From the mate it was further learned that the pursuer had overhauled the pursued between Petit Goufre—which he and the whole company called Petty Gulf—and Grand Gulf; places named before the days of steam for their dangerous eddies. Yet, he went on to tell Ramsey, the swifter boat, with more freight to put ashore and with a larger appetite for cord-wood, had never got clean away. Even now, in full view ahead, she was down at half speed, wooding up from a barge in tow alongside. You could hear her crew singing as they trotted under their great shoulder loads of wood. The amateurs, except Hugh but including Ramsey, caught up their song and were promptly joined by a group around the bell of theWestwoodas that gallant loser foamed along between theVotaressand the shore:"Oh, if I had a scolding wife,As sure as you are bornI'd take her down to Noo OrleansAnd trade her off for corn."Presently theAntelopecast off the emptied flat in midstream, and a redoubled whiteness behind her paddle-boxes showed full speed."Now we can give her a square deal!" said a youth."And pass her inside of an hour!" declared another."In Bunch's Cut-off!" ventured one to the commodore, but the commodore said theVotaressherself was hungry for wood, and the mate confirmed him by a nod."How much wood," some one asked the mate, "will a boat like this use up in twenty-four hours?" It quickened the blood to be up here midway between these turbid waters and yonder passionate sky so joyous in one quarter, so angry in another; particularly to be here while steadily distancing one beautiful boat and overtaking another "amid green islands," as Mrs. Gilmore quoted—one of which, still in sight astern, was that old haunt of flatboat robbers, called Island Ninety-four, Stack's Island, or Crow's Nest. One half forgot the sad state of affairs below. Conversation glided as swiftly as a flock of swallows and in as many directions."How much wood?" said the mate. "Well, that sort o' depends. I once part owned a boat that fo' one whole month didn't burn enough wood to dry the sheriff's shoes, but that 'uz 'cause he kep' her tied up to the bank."Ramsey did not hear this and cared nothing for the laugh it won. She had seen the doctor and the priest slip from the twins' room in the texas and go below aft. "How's mom-a?" she eagerly asked the commodore."Very well.""How's Lucian?"Lucian was so much better, he told her, that both brothers had been returned to their cabin stateroom."Then you've just put a new case into the texas!"The commodore smiled. "Yes, from the freight deck.""Freight—humph! That's the lower deck," she reminiscently said, turning to Hugh. "Who is it? Is it—Otto?"But Hugh's face wore its absurd iron look, which had its usual effect on her. The old man spoke: "Will Miss Ramsey do us all a favor; one that will help the play?""Whew, yes! That'll help everything. What is it?""It's to make no mention of the new case to any one.""Till the close of the evening," put in the Gilmores, and Ramsey saw that they knew. Yet——"All right," she said. "Oh, I know who it is." She tossed her curls. "It's Otto's mother." But both tone and glance lacked conviction. The commodore left them.Meantime the mate was amusing his half of the company."How much wood," he was repeating. "I as't that myself once 'pon a time. D'dy'ever hear the answer? They tell the yarn on lots o' loons but I 'uz the real one 'n' I got the answer f'm Gid Hayle aboard the oldAdmiral."The names caught Ramsey's ear and drew her gaze. "ThatAdmiral," continued the mate, "could eat wood like a harrikin. Says Hayle to me: 'Well, that depends on yo' boat 'n' yo' wood. With the right boat 'n' the right wood—oak, ash, hickory—y'ought to burn f'm sixty to sevemty cord' a day. But ef yo' feed'n' this boat cottonwood, why, yo' simply shovellin' shavin's into hell.'"Ramsey looked sad. Weary of contrasts unflattering to her men-folks, she glanced from the refined actor to the elegant old commodore, blushed to the player's wife and accepted her embracing arm. "Yass," pursued the mate, "s'e jest so: 'Yo' simply shovellin' shavin's——'"It was not Hugh's motion that cut him short but Ramsey's voice as with a flash she said: "Go on. I don't care! If pop-a said it it's so!"A raindrop wet her cheek. From the pilot-house Ned, as he pulled the wheel over to chase the hardpressedAntelopewestward into Bunch's Cut-off, warningly drawled that they were about to run into a shower. At his side Watson's cub was letting down the storm board. A blue-black cloud overhanging the green head of the cut-off had suddenly widened across all that quarter and turned leaden gray. A writhing wind struck the boat fairly in front. The waters ruffled, flattened, and seemed to run faster. On an island close abeam thousands of young cottonwoods, a mantle of unbroken verdure, bent low, paled, reeled, darkened, and whipped. Dead ahead, a flash of lightning dropped from zenith to sky-line, stood blindingly quivering, and scarcely had vanished when the thunder cracked to split the ear."Scoot, ladies," said the mate, "or in three shakes you'll be as wet as the river!" A single glance up the stream—though Ramsey must needs take a double one—showed the rain coming, so near and so dense that not a sign of theAntelopewas visible. The company fled, some to a larboard stair, some to a starboard. Hugh and Ramsey suddenly missed the Gilmores, the Gilmores missed them, each pair turned to find the other, the lashing rain leaped down upon them as if they were all it had come for, and with words lost in a second thunder-clap the mate threw open the captain's room, pressed them in, and began to dry them with a whisk-broom. The captain, he said, was below. "Off watch didn't mean off watch to John Courteney.""Nor to Gideon Hayle," prompted Ramsey, and while he ha-haed a cordial assent she asked: "Whereabouts below is he—Captain Courteney?" But the mate had turned away and she asked Hugh: "Where's your father? What's he doing?" Her thought was still on the unmentionable new case."I'll tell you," said Hugh in the low voice she liked so well. "Will you look at the river with me?"He felt her responsive nod and smile even after they had moved to the front window farthest from their three seniors and stood gazing out into the beautiful tempest. Both wind and downpour had somewhat slackened their fury. A bit nearer than before and more to starboard they could faintly make out theAntelope, so white that it seemed as if she had gone down and her ghost come up wrapped and whipped in sheets of rain."You don't ask me about your mother," said Hugh.
Again theVotaresswas passing the Westwood and again was but a short mile behind theAntelope.
Led by Ramsey, the amateur players, including Hugh, had stopped rehearsing and were on the skylight roof, gathered about the commodore, the Gilmores, and the bell. In their company, though below them on the forward hurricane deck, the first mate leaned bulkily against the roof on which they stood. It was his watch. Ned was up at the wheel.
As early as the evening before, a good hundred and fifty miles back down the river, theAntelope, it will be remembered, had been close on theWestwood'sheels. So Gilmore reminded his wife. So Hugh needlessly reminded Ramsey. From the mate it was further learned that the pursuer had overhauled the pursued between Petit Goufre—which he and the whole company called Petty Gulf—and Grand Gulf; places named before the days of steam for their dangerous eddies. Yet, he went on to tell Ramsey, the swifter boat, with more freight to put ashore and with a larger appetite for cord-wood, had never got clean away. Even now, in full view ahead, she was down at half speed, wooding up from a barge in tow alongside. You could hear her crew singing as they trotted under their great shoulder loads of wood. The amateurs, except Hugh but including Ramsey, caught up their song and were promptly joined by a group around the bell of theWestwoodas that gallant loser foamed along between theVotaressand the shore:
"Oh, if I had a scolding wife,As sure as you are bornI'd take her down to Noo OrleansAnd trade her off for corn."
"Oh, if I had a scolding wife,As sure as you are bornI'd take her down to Noo OrleansAnd trade her off for corn."
"Oh, if I had a scolding wife,
As sure as you are born
I'd take her down to Noo Orleans
And trade her off for corn."
Presently theAntelopecast off the emptied flat in midstream, and a redoubled whiteness behind her paddle-boxes showed full speed.
"Now we can give her a square deal!" said a youth.
"And pass her inside of an hour!" declared another.
"In Bunch's Cut-off!" ventured one to the commodore, but the commodore said theVotaressherself was hungry for wood, and the mate confirmed him by a nod.
"How much wood," some one asked the mate, "will a boat like this use up in twenty-four hours?" It quickened the blood to be up here midway between these turbid waters and yonder passionate sky so joyous in one quarter, so angry in another; particularly to be here while steadily distancing one beautiful boat and overtaking another "amid green islands," as Mrs. Gilmore quoted—one of which, still in sight astern, was that old haunt of flatboat robbers, called Island Ninety-four, Stack's Island, or Crow's Nest. One half forgot the sad state of affairs below. Conversation glided as swiftly as a flock of swallows and in as many directions.
"How much wood?" said the mate. "Well, that sort o' depends. I once part owned a boat that fo' one whole month didn't burn enough wood to dry the sheriff's shoes, but that 'uz 'cause he kep' her tied up to the bank."
Ramsey did not hear this and cared nothing for the laugh it won. She had seen the doctor and the priest slip from the twins' room in the texas and go below aft. "How's mom-a?" she eagerly asked the commodore.
"Very well."
"How's Lucian?"
Lucian was so much better, he told her, that both brothers had been returned to their cabin stateroom.
"Then you've just put a new case into the texas!"
The commodore smiled. "Yes, from the freight deck."
"Freight—humph! That's the lower deck," she reminiscently said, turning to Hugh. "Who is it? Is it—Otto?"
But Hugh's face wore its absurd iron look, which had its usual effect on her. The old man spoke: "Will Miss Ramsey do us all a favor; one that will help the play?"
"Whew, yes! That'll help everything. What is it?"
"It's to make no mention of the new case to any one."
"Till the close of the evening," put in the Gilmores, and Ramsey saw that they knew. Yet——
"All right," she said. "Oh, I know who it is." She tossed her curls. "It's Otto's mother." But both tone and glance lacked conviction. The commodore left them.
Meantime the mate was amusing his half of the company.
"How much wood," he was repeating. "I as't that myself once 'pon a time. D'dy'ever hear the answer? They tell the yarn on lots o' loons but I 'uz the real one 'n' I got the answer f'm Gid Hayle aboard the oldAdmiral."
The names caught Ramsey's ear and drew her gaze. "ThatAdmiral," continued the mate, "could eat wood like a harrikin. Says Hayle to me: 'Well, that depends on yo' boat 'n' yo' wood. With the right boat 'n' the right wood—oak, ash, hickory—y'ought to burn f'm sixty to sevemty cord' a day. But ef yo' feed'n' this boat cottonwood, why, yo' simply shovellin' shavin's into hell.'"
Ramsey looked sad. Weary of contrasts unflattering to her men-folks, she glanced from the refined actor to the elegant old commodore, blushed to the player's wife and accepted her embracing arm. "Yass," pursued the mate, "s'e jest so: 'Yo' simply shovellin' shavin's——'"
It was not Hugh's motion that cut him short but Ramsey's voice as with a flash she said: "Go on. I don't care! If pop-a said it it's so!"
A raindrop wet her cheek. From the pilot-house Ned, as he pulled the wheel over to chase the hardpressedAntelopewestward into Bunch's Cut-off, warningly drawled that they were about to run into a shower. At his side Watson's cub was letting down the storm board. A blue-black cloud overhanging the green head of the cut-off had suddenly widened across all that quarter and turned leaden gray. A writhing wind struck the boat fairly in front. The waters ruffled, flattened, and seemed to run faster. On an island close abeam thousands of young cottonwoods, a mantle of unbroken verdure, bent low, paled, reeled, darkened, and whipped. Dead ahead, a flash of lightning dropped from zenith to sky-line, stood blindingly quivering, and scarcely had vanished when the thunder cracked to split the ear.
"Scoot, ladies," said the mate, "or in three shakes you'll be as wet as the river!" A single glance up the stream—though Ramsey must needs take a double one—showed the rain coming, so near and so dense that not a sign of theAntelopewas visible. The company fled, some to a larboard stair, some to a starboard. Hugh and Ramsey suddenly missed the Gilmores, the Gilmores missed them, each pair turned to find the other, the lashing rain leaped down upon them as if they were all it had come for, and with words lost in a second thunder-clap the mate threw open the captain's room, pressed them in, and began to dry them with a whisk-broom. The captain, he said, was below. "Off watch didn't mean off watch to John Courteney."
"Nor to Gideon Hayle," prompted Ramsey, and while he ha-haed a cordial assent she asked: "Whereabouts below is he—Captain Courteney?" But the mate had turned away and she asked Hugh: "Where's your father? What's he doing?" Her thought was still on the unmentionable new case.
"I'll tell you," said Hugh in the low voice she liked so well. "Will you look at the river with me?"
He felt her responsive nod and smile even after they had moved to the front window farthest from their three seniors and stood gazing out into the beautiful tempest. Both wind and downpour had somewhat slackened their fury. A bit nearer than before and more to starboard they could faintly make out theAntelope, so white that it seemed as if she had gone down and her ghost come up wrapped and whipped in sheets of rain.
"You don't ask me about your mother," said Hugh.
XXXVICAPTAIN'S ROOM
"Ah!—when you've been all this time with us!""No, once I was away, a good while.""That's so! And while you was away—were away—" In lively undertone Ramsey ran on to tell of Mrs. Gilmore's having in Hugh's absence called in her maid Harriet to show the young lady from Napoleon how to do a bit of stage business without a hint of the stage. At the tale's end the pair glanced round from the nearingAntelopeto the Gilmores and back again. "Harriet's talented. You wouldn't think she could be talented. And isn't she handsome!""I've yet to see her face," said Hugh abstractedly."That's so, too! When she heard you coming back that time, she ran like a kildee." The narrator checked a laugh. "How's mom-a? Oh, she's well or you'd have told me. I just can't imagine mom-a any way but well." But again the tone betrayed incertitude."Yes, she's well," said the youth. "So is my father.""Where is he?"Hugh's queer solemnity deepened. "He's down in a stateroom with your brothers. The senator and the general have just joined them."What a freshet of grave information! Ramsey laughed straight at him. "You talk like a trance medium.""Not at all.""You do! I heard one once. You're in a trance now.""Not at all.""You are! Y'always are." When Hugh laughed, her laugh redoubled. The mate and the players, though busy talking, took time to smile; the mate winked an eye. Suddenly Ramsey sobered. "Is Basile in hot water again? Tell me quick.""Tell me first," said Hugh, "why his two brothers——""Are so wild? Because pop-a won't allow mom-a to hold them in. Pop-a says: 'Oh, let 'em sow their wild oats early, like me; so deep they'll never come up.' Oh, my! they're up now.""I wasn't going to ask that.""Well, I can't tell if you don't ask.""Why do they keep themselves so apart from you?""Me? Oh, they just can't stand me!—nor even mom-a.""That's bad, for all of us.""All of—who? Oh!... Humph!... Oh, but it's worse for Basile! He goes with them till he's sick of 'em, then tries mom-a and me till he's just as sick of—of me—and himself—and then strays off to whoever he can pick up with!""This time," said Hugh, "he's been picked up.""Oh,nowwhat's happened?""He sickened of those boys and girls he was selling tickets with and to drown yesterday's recollections he took a hand at cards with two strangers."Ramsey caught her breath but then laughed joyously. "He couldn't! He had no money!""Except from his sale of tickets.""Oh!" Her tears started. "Oh, where was mammy Joy?""Nursing the sick.""The new—?" She barely escaped breaking her word. "Oh," she moaned, "he didn't usethatmoney?""He lost it. He was wild to play on and recover it, and his brothers were as eager to have him do it.""Why,theycouldn't help him. They tried, yesterday, to borrow from mom-a.... Wait." The last word came softly. The Gilmores and the mate drew near to see theAntelopeovertaken. There she loomed, out on the starboard bow, shrouded in the swirling rain. How unlike the earlier passing, down below Natchez! No touching of guards, no hail by sign or sound. "Like ladies under two umbrell's!" laughed Ramsey to the actor's wife.Now squarely abreast, stem and stem, wheel and wheel, the two crafts seemed to stand motionless with the tempest rushing aft between them. Then fathom after fathom theAntelopefell behind, the mate and the Gilmores moved away, Ramsey softly bade Hugh "go on," and his first utterance drew her liveliest look."There's another thing makes your brothers wild," he said, "which they're not to blame for.""What's that?""Our starving plantation life," said Hugh, speaking low."Why, they call it the only life for a gentleman!""That's because they're so starved, so marooned.""It's so tasteless without high seasoning, Basile says," said Ramsey. She meditated. "Basile loves to eat."Said Hugh, "It's a life I don't want you to live," and for an age of seconds they looked into each other's eyes.Then Ramsey—not drooping a lash—"I love the river.""For keeps?"She nodded, and still they looked. At length said Hugh:"I tried hard to make friends with the twins, but——""They wouldn't. I know. Mr. Watson told Mrs. Gilmore.""Yet a while ago, on the strength of it, they sent for me, to ask me to ask my father to indorse their note."Ramsey gasped: "You declined, of course?""Yes, but I told those other two passengers if they cast another card with any of your brothers they'd go ashore, themselves, as quick as the boat could land."Ramsey turned and gazed out on the subsiding storm. "Why are the senator and the general down there?""For quite another matter.""Weapons. I know. Mr. Watson told Mrs. Gilmore. I thought that was settled.""It is.""Then why is your father there?""To get the twins away from the senator and the general, and their brother away from them and back to his——""Sister!" softly laughed Ramsey. "Oh, not to mom-a! just to me! I'll go—" She started, but Hugh said:"To you, yes, when my father has put him in a way to cover his loss without telling your mother."Their eyes met again. Hers were bright and wet with accusal. "Is thatyourproposition?""Yes, and my father's too."She whipped round and gazed out again over the tawny waters. To gaze out beside her he came so near that they almost touched. The shores were once more a clear picture, greener than ever and unvexed by the wind. The rain was slight and fine. The boat was swinging northward toward a small blue rift in the gray. At the room's farther door the mate was leaving the Gilmores for the forecastle.Without a stir she asked: "Why don'tyoubring Basile?""I must stay with our friends here."The surprised girl glanced across at the players.Side by side they also were gazing out and speaking low. "I'd like to know why with them.""And I must tell you."She faintly tossed, gazing out again: "Why 'must'?""Because to you Ican—tell things.""Haven't you told your father yet—about—Phyllis? Humph!—had to practise on me first.""Yes. But there's a better reason—for everything I've ever told you."She slowly faced him, and he added: "I want your help.""For what? Not the Gilmores?""Yes, for them too now. They're in real danger.""Fr'—from what? Not—not from—my brothers?""The twins, yes, and the general, John the Baptist, and a dozen more. They've guessed it out that the Gilmores——""Are—So have I! A, b, ab——"Hugh was mute. She glanced round at the players' backs and then again at him, asking with soft abruptness:"Where's the bishop? With mom-a yet?"Hugh kept silence. "No, you know he's not," she answered for him. In her steady eyes he could see, growing every moment, a new sense of the fearful plight of things and of her relation to them. Her young bosom rose and fell, and when her lips parted to speak again their corners twitched. "He—he's the new case! I will mention it! I've a good right. Why shouldn't I?""Only that he didn't want you to know. He wanted you—us—all, without knowing, to go right on with the programme. We must. Even now you will, won't you?"She could only nod. Just then Mrs. Gilmore's maid, in a long burnoose, with umbrellas and wraps, rose into sight close below, on a stair from the passenger-guards, spread one of her umbrellas and looked eagerly about for her mistress. One glance went up to Ramsey, who beckoned through the glass, but the maid gave no sign of seeing her. The slight rain had momentarily freshened, and she was so muffled to the eyes in the light veil which was always on her head or shoulders in pretty Spanish fashion that when she started forward round the skylights for the other side of the roof Ramsey laughed to Hugh:"Why, I know it's Harriet by her veil, don't you?""I know only the veil. I saw it come aboard.""The veil of mystery!" she playfully murmured, began to hum a tune and bit her lip on noticing that it was "Gideon's Band." "Don't you think I might omit that to-night?""No, it's the best thing you do.""Humph!—mighty poor reason—Aha! I knew it was Harriet."The Gilmores were beckoning out their window. The actor opened the door on that side and the maid came warily in. Briefly and in hurried apology under her breath while dealing out her burdens she told of the impatience of those below to resume the rehearsal and of their having driven her to this errand the moment they could. Mrs. Gilmore handed Hugh a shawl for Ramsey and an umbrella for himself, her husband laid a mantle on her shoulders, and the maid reopened the door he had shut; but Hugh called from the one opposite that it was the better way and the players started for it. The younger pair gave them precedence, a breeze swept through, the maid reshut her door, Hugh, holding his, bade her follow her mistress, she sprang to obey and the "veil of mystery," which caught in the closed door, was stripped from her like a sail from a wreck."Stop!... Stop! the safest place for you on this boat now is right where you are standing—Phyllis""Stop!... Stop! the safest place for you on this boat now is right where you are standing—Phyllis"Instantly she crouched and with the swiftness of a wild creature flashed round and snatched open the door by which she had entered; but a form pressed between her and the opening and when she threw up her face she was looking close into the astounded eyes of Hugh Courteney. Her frame recoiled but not her eyes; his own held them. Without turning he shut the door at his back as Ramsey closed the one opposite, and still holding the maid servant's gaze, he followed her slow retreat, and in that droll depth of voice which earlier had been Ramsey's keenest amusement said to the eyes so near his own:"Stop!... Stop! the safest place for you on this boat now is right where you are standing—Phyllis."
"Ah!—when you've been all this time with us!"
"No, once I was away, a good while."
"That's so! And while you was away—were away—" In lively undertone Ramsey ran on to tell of Mrs. Gilmore's having in Hugh's absence called in her maid Harriet to show the young lady from Napoleon how to do a bit of stage business without a hint of the stage. At the tale's end the pair glanced round from the nearingAntelopeto the Gilmores and back again. "Harriet's talented. You wouldn't think she could be talented. And isn't she handsome!"
"I've yet to see her face," said Hugh abstractedly.
"That's so, too! When she heard you coming back that time, she ran like a kildee." The narrator checked a laugh. "How's mom-a? Oh, she's well or you'd have told me. I just can't imagine mom-a any way but well." But again the tone betrayed incertitude.
"Yes, she's well," said the youth. "So is my father."
"Where is he?"
Hugh's queer solemnity deepened. "He's down in a stateroom with your brothers. The senator and the general have just joined them."
What a freshet of grave information! Ramsey laughed straight at him. "You talk like a trance medium."
"Not at all."
"You do! I heard one once. You're in a trance now."
"Not at all."
"You are! Y'always are." When Hugh laughed, her laugh redoubled. The mate and the players, though busy talking, took time to smile; the mate winked an eye. Suddenly Ramsey sobered. "Is Basile in hot water again? Tell me quick."
"Tell me first," said Hugh, "why his two brothers——"
"Are so wild? Because pop-a won't allow mom-a to hold them in. Pop-a says: 'Oh, let 'em sow their wild oats early, like me; so deep they'll never come up.' Oh, my! they're up now."
"I wasn't going to ask that."
"Well, I can't tell if you don't ask."
"Why do they keep themselves so apart from you?"
"Me? Oh, they just can't stand me!—nor even mom-a."
"That's bad, for all of us."
"All of—who? Oh!... Humph!... Oh, but it's worse for Basile! He goes with them till he's sick of 'em, then tries mom-a and me till he's just as sick of—of me—and himself—and then strays off to whoever he can pick up with!"
"This time," said Hugh, "he's been picked up."
"Oh,nowwhat's happened?"
"He sickened of those boys and girls he was selling tickets with and to drown yesterday's recollections he took a hand at cards with two strangers."
Ramsey caught her breath but then laughed joyously. "He couldn't! He had no money!"
"Except from his sale of tickets."
"Oh!" Her tears started. "Oh, where was mammy Joy?"
"Nursing the sick."
"The new—?" She barely escaped breaking her word. "Oh," she moaned, "he didn't usethatmoney?"
"He lost it. He was wild to play on and recover it, and his brothers were as eager to have him do it."
"Why,theycouldn't help him. They tried, yesterday, to borrow from mom-a.... Wait." The last word came softly. The Gilmores and the mate drew near to see theAntelopeovertaken. There she loomed, out on the starboard bow, shrouded in the swirling rain. How unlike the earlier passing, down below Natchez! No touching of guards, no hail by sign or sound. "Like ladies under two umbrell's!" laughed Ramsey to the actor's wife.
Now squarely abreast, stem and stem, wheel and wheel, the two crafts seemed to stand motionless with the tempest rushing aft between them. Then fathom after fathom theAntelopefell behind, the mate and the Gilmores moved away, Ramsey softly bade Hugh "go on," and his first utterance drew her liveliest look.
"There's another thing makes your brothers wild," he said, "which they're not to blame for."
"What's that?"
"Our starving plantation life," said Hugh, speaking low.
"Why, they call it the only life for a gentleman!"
"That's because they're so starved, so marooned."
"It's so tasteless without high seasoning, Basile says," said Ramsey. She meditated. "Basile loves to eat."
Said Hugh, "It's a life I don't want you to live," and for an age of seconds they looked into each other's eyes.
Then Ramsey—not drooping a lash—"I love the river."
"For keeps?"
She nodded, and still they looked. At length said Hugh:
"I tried hard to make friends with the twins, but——"
"They wouldn't. I know. Mr. Watson told Mrs. Gilmore."
"Yet a while ago, on the strength of it, they sent for me, to ask me to ask my father to indorse their note."
Ramsey gasped: "You declined, of course?"
"Yes, but I told those other two passengers if they cast another card with any of your brothers they'd go ashore, themselves, as quick as the boat could land."
Ramsey turned and gazed out on the subsiding storm. "Why are the senator and the general down there?"
"For quite another matter."
"Weapons. I know. Mr. Watson told Mrs. Gilmore. I thought that was settled."
"It is."
"Then why is your father there?"
"To get the twins away from the senator and the general, and their brother away from them and back to his——"
"Sister!" softly laughed Ramsey. "Oh, not to mom-a! just to me! I'll go—" She started, but Hugh said:
"To you, yes, when my father has put him in a way to cover his loss without telling your mother."
Their eyes met again. Hers were bright and wet with accusal. "Is thatyourproposition?"
"Yes, and my father's too."
She whipped round and gazed out again over the tawny waters. To gaze out beside her he came so near that they almost touched. The shores were once more a clear picture, greener than ever and unvexed by the wind. The rain was slight and fine. The boat was swinging northward toward a small blue rift in the gray. At the room's farther door the mate was leaving the Gilmores for the forecastle.
Without a stir she asked: "Why don'tyoubring Basile?"
"I must stay with our friends here."
The surprised girl glanced across at the players.
Side by side they also were gazing out and speaking low. "I'd like to know why with them."
"And I must tell you."
She faintly tossed, gazing out again: "Why 'must'?"
"Because to you Ican—tell things."
"Haven't you told your father yet—about—Phyllis? Humph!—had to practise on me first."
"Yes. But there's a better reason—for everything I've ever told you."
She slowly faced him, and he added: "I want your help."
"For what? Not the Gilmores?"
"Yes, for them too now. They're in real danger."
"Fr'—from what? Not—not from—my brothers?"
"The twins, yes, and the general, John the Baptist, and a dozen more. They've guessed it out that the Gilmores——"
"Are—So have I! A, b, ab——"
Hugh was mute. She glanced round at the players' backs and then again at him, asking with soft abruptness:
"Where's the bishop? With mom-a yet?"
Hugh kept silence. "No, you know he's not," she answered for him. In her steady eyes he could see, growing every moment, a new sense of the fearful plight of things and of her relation to them. Her young bosom rose and fell, and when her lips parted to speak again their corners twitched. "He—he's the new case! I will mention it! I've a good right. Why shouldn't I?"
"Only that he didn't want you to know. He wanted you—us—all, without knowing, to go right on with the programme. We must. Even now you will, won't you?"
She could only nod. Just then Mrs. Gilmore's maid, in a long burnoose, with umbrellas and wraps, rose into sight close below, on a stair from the passenger-guards, spread one of her umbrellas and looked eagerly about for her mistress. One glance went up to Ramsey, who beckoned through the glass, but the maid gave no sign of seeing her. The slight rain had momentarily freshened, and she was so muffled to the eyes in the light veil which was always on her head or shoulders in pretty Spanish fashion that when she started forward round the skylights for the other side of the roof Ramsey laughed to Hugh:
"Why, I know it's Harriet by her veil, don't you?"
"I know only the veil. I saw it come aboard."
"The veil of mystery!" she playfully murmured, began to hum a tune and bit her lip on noticing that it was "Gideon's Band." "Don't you think I might omit that to-night?"
"No, it's the best thing you do."
"Humph!—mighty poor reason—Aha! I knew it was Harriet."
The Gilmores were beckoning out their window. The actor opened the door on that side and the maid came warily in. Briefly and in hurried apology under her breath while dealing out her burdens she told of the impatience of those below to resume the rehearsal and of their having driven her to this errand the moment they could. Mrs. Gilmore handed Hugh a shawl for Ramsey and an umbrella for himself, her husband laid a mantle on her shoulders, and the maid reopened the door he had shut; but Hugh called from the one opposite that it was the better way and the players started for it. The younger pair gave them precedence, a breeze swept through, the maid reshut her door, Hugh, holding his, bade her follow her mistress, she sprang to obey and the "veil of mystery," which caught in the closed door, was stripped from her like a sail from a wreck.
"Stop!... Stop! the safest place for you on this boat now is right where you are standing—Phyllis""Stop!... Stop! the safest place for you on this boat now is right where you are standing—Phyllis"
Instantly she crouched and with the swiftness of a wild creature flashed round and snatched open the door by which she had entered; but a form pressed between her and the opening and when she threw up her face she was looking close into the astounded eyes of Hugh Courteney. Her frame recoiled but not her eyes; his own held them. Without turning he shut the door at his back as Ramsey closed the one opposite, and still holding the maid servant's gaze, he followed her slow retreat, and in that droll depth of voice which earlier had been Ramsey's keenest amusement said to the eyes so near his own:
"Stop!... Stop! the safest place for you on this boat now is right where you are standing—Phyllis."