Inhis inexorable view of the sanctity of his promise Colonel Kenwynton had no impulse to confide the details of the revelation he had received or to take counsel thereon. Still, he could but look with an accession of interest at Adrian Ducie when he met him at the breakfast table, the passengers of theCherokee Rosedallying over the meal, prolonging it to the utmost in the dearth of other interest or occupation.
Although Ducie seemed to have mustered the philosophy to ignore the serious aspects of this most irksome and dolorous detention, it had darkened all the horizon to Floyd-Rosney’s exacting and censorious mood. “I can’t imagine, Captain, how you should not have been on the lookout for the formation of an obstruction capable of grounding the boat,” was his cheerful matutinal greeting.
“Oh, Miss Dean says he knew it was there all the time, and only wished to entertain us,” his wife interposed, with a view of toning down her lord’s displeasure, but her sarcastic chin was in the air, and her clipped, quick enunciation gave token only of one of her ironic pleasantries.
“Well, I intend to eat him out of house and home while I am about it,” said Ducie, with an affectation of roughness. “This table is not runà la carte. You can’t charge more than the passage-money,Captain, no matter how long we abide with you in this pleasance of a sand-bar—and I really think, waiter, I can get away with the other wing of that fried chicken.”
“You think you can get away;canyou?” Mrs. Floyd-Rosney fleered.
The queer little roughness he affected was incongruous with the delicate elegance of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s presence. The polish of his own appearance and ordinary manner warranted it as little, and the contrariety of his mental attitude was like that of a bad child “showing off” in the reverse of expectation or desire. Between the heavy sulking of her husband in the troublouscontretempsof the detention of the boat, and the peculiar tone that Adrian Ducie had taken, in which, however, offense was at once untenable and inexplicable, it might seem that Mrs. Floyd-Rosney had much ado to preserve her airy placidity and maintain the poise of the delicate irony of her manner. This became more practicable when Ducie’s attention was diverted to a little girl of twelve who had boarded the packet with her father at the landing of a fashionable suburban school some distance up the river, evidently designing to spend the week-end at home. She was a bouncing little girl, with liquid black eyes, and dark red hair, long and abundant, plaited on either side of her head and tied up with black ribbon bows of preposterously wide loops. While she was as noisy and as active as a boy, she was evidently constantly beset with the realization that her lot in life was of feminine restrictions, and miserably repented of every alert caper. Her memory, however, was short, as short, one might say, as hervery abbreviated skirts, and the monition of the staid gait, appropriate to her sex, always struck her after the fantastic gallopade or muscular skip on her long, handsome, black-stockinged legs, and never by any chance earlier. She had a most Briarean and centipedal consciousness in Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s presence, which she instinctively appraised as critical, and she was covered with confusion as she came flustering out of her stateroom to the breakfast table to realize that she had banged the door behind her. By way of disposing of one superfluous foot at least she crooked her leg deftly at the knee, placed its foot in the chair and sat down upon it, turning scarlet as she did so, realizing all too late that the maneuver was perfectly obvious, and wondering what Mrs. Floyd-Rosney must think of a girl who sat on her foot. For the opinion of the score of other persons at the tables she had not a thought or a care, doubtless relying on their good nature to condone the attitude, curiously affected and prized by persons of her age and sex. An agile twist had got the foot down to the floor again, and now with restored composure and rebounding spirits her gushing loquacity was reasserted, and she was exchanging matutinal greetings with her traveling companions; her father, a tall, lean, quiet man, who had marked her entrance with raised eyebrows and a concerned air, having resumed his talk on the tariff with his next neighbor at table.
“Have compassion on our dullness, Miss Marjorie,” said Adrian Ducie, suavely smiling at her from across the board. In his contrariety he seemed to have divined Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s covert disapproval and made a point of according his own favor.Marjorie’s heart, however, was in no danger from his fascinations. To her he seemed a man well advanced in years, quite an old bachelor, indeed. “Tell us your dreams.”
“Dreams? oh, mercy!” How often had she been warned against rising inflections and interjections? “My dreams are all mixed up. I don’t know now what they were.”
“I will disentangle them for you,” he said, blandly; then in parenthesis to the waiter, “Give the cook my compliments and tell him to send up another omelette, which I will share with Miss Ashley.”
“Oh, I don’t like eggs,” Marjorie blurted out, then stopped short. How often had she been admonished never to say at table that she disliked any article of diet. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, she was sure, must have noticed that lapse.
“Then I will eat it all by myself—mark me now, Captain! While awaiting its construction I will tell your dreams, and interpret their mystery.”
“Oh, oh,” gurgled Marjorie. What a nice old man was this Mr. Adrian Ducie! Her blithe young eyes were liquid and brilliant with expectation.
“You dreamed that you and I went hunting, with some others who don’t matter and who shall be nameless,” he glanced slightingly up and down the row of passengers at the table. “We went ashore in the yawl, and I borrowed the Captain’s rifle, and——”
“No, you didn’t,” said the Captain, from the next table, “for I haven’t got one.”
“You don’t mean it?” said Ducie, stopping short. “Then what would become of us if pirates shouldboard this gallant craft of ours? Depend wholly on the pistol pockets of the passengers?”
“Oh, oh, Mr. Ducie,” cried Marjorie, quite losing her hold on herself, “you are so funny!”
“Thank you, oh, very much, I can be funnier than that when I try.”
Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s unseeing eyes perceived no interest apparently in this conversation. Now and then, with an absorbed air, she recurred to her tea and toast as if naught were going forward, while her husband ate his breakfast as silently and with as much gruff concentration as a hound with a bone.
Their persistent expression of a lack of interest seemed to stimulate Mr. Ducie to a further absorption of the attention of the company. “Are there really no shot-guns, no fowling-pieces aboard, nothing to shoot with deadlier than the darts of Miss Marjorie’s bright eyes?”
“Oh, oh,” she squealed, enchanted at this turn, and laid down her knife and fork to put her hands before her lips apparently to suppress a series of similar shrillnesses, for this old man’s funniness was of a most captivating order.
“I notice that there is a swamper’s cabin over there on the bank; I’ll bet he has got a rifle; but what is the nearest plantation house, Captain? Mansion, I should say,” he corrected the phrase with the satiric flout of the younger generation at the mannerisms of yore.
The Captain seemed to resent it. “You may very safely call it a ‘mansion,’ sir, it has twenty-five rooms, exclusive of ball-room, billiard-room, picture-gallery, and the domestic offices, kitchen, laundry, dairy, and quarters for servants, and so forth.The Duciehurst plantation-house is the nearest mansion. It is really a ruin, now, and uninhabited, I suppose, but it was good enough in its day.”
A sudden portentous gravity smote the countenance of Adrian Ducie. Although the risible muscles and ligaments still held the laughing contour, all the mirth was gone out of it. His face was as if stricken into stone, as if he had suddenly beheld the Gorgon Head of trouble. The change was so marked, so momentous, that Colonel Kenwynton, forgetting for the moment whence came the association of ideas, suddenly asked:
“You have the same name as the former owner, Mr. Ducie, though I suppose you don’t hold the title to the mansion?”
“Oh, I hold the title fast enough,” replied Ducie, with his wonted off-hand manner, “though it’s like my ‘title to a mansion in the skies,’ I can’t read it clear.”
Floyd-Rosney’s mood was already lowering enough, but for some reason, not immediately apparent, his averse discontent was fomented by the change of the subject. He paused with his tea-cup poised in his hand. His deep voice weighed more heavily than usual on the silence.
“It seems to me a mis-statement to say that you have a title to the property,—a title is a right. There are certainly some forty years’ adverse possession against any outstanding claim, of which I have never heard.”
Ducie was eyeing Floyd-Rosney with a look at once affronted and amazed. “And where do you derive your information as to my title to Duciehurst?”
“I have no information as to yourtitleto Duciehurst, which is the reason that I could not remain silent when such title was asserted, though the discussion cannot be edifying to this goodly company.” He waved his hand at the rows of breakfasting passengers with an unmirthful smile and his courtesy was so perfunctory as obviously to have no root. “The title is mine, it comes to me within the year from the will of my Uncle Horace Carriton, who held it for forty years. But,” with his sour, condescending smile at the company, “the courts and not the breakfast table are the proper place to assert a right that is not barred by the lapse of time.”
“The remedy may be barred, but not the right,” Ducie retorted angrily.
Captain Disnett’s voice sounded with pacifying intonations. He did not seek to change the subject but to steer it clear of breakers. “I never could understand why Mr. Carriton let the old mansion go to wreck and ruin, fine old place as there is on the river. Though he rented out the lands the house has always remained untenanted.”
Mr. Floyd-Rosney’s dignity was enhanced by the composure which he found it possible to maintain in this nettling discussion. “The house was much injured by the occupancy of guerillas and military marauders during the Civil War,” he rejoined. “After it came into the possession of my uncle, when peace was restored, it was left vacant from necessity. My uncle, who was a non-resident,—lived in Tennessee,—would not cut up the plantation into small holdings; many tenants make much mischief, so he preferred to lease the entire place to some man of moderate means for a term of years, as noperson of fortune appeared as a purchaser of the house, which it would cost largely to restore. None of the successive lessees was able or willing to furnish or maintain the mansion in a style suitable to its pretensions, yet they were too proud to live in a corner of it like a mouse in a hole. Such a man would prefer to live in a neighboring villa or cottage while farming the lands as better suited to his comfort and credit than that vacant wilderness of architecture.”
“Strange visitors it must have at odd times,” meditated the Captain. “Once in a while in our runs I have seen lights flitting about there at night, quite distinct from the pilot-house. And in wintry weather a gleam shows far over the snow.”
“Tramps, gipsies, river-pirates, I suppose,” suggested Colonel Kenwynton.
Ducie was glowering down at his spoon as he turned it aimlessly in his empty cup, a deep red flush on his cheek and his eyes on fire.
“Yes, yes. There is a tradition of hidden treasure at Duciehurst, one of the wild riverside stories as old as the hills,” said the Captain, “and I suppose the water-rats, and the shanty-boaters, and the river-pirates all take turns in hunting for it when fuel and shelter get scarce, and the pot boils slow, and work goes hard with the lazy cattle.”
For one moment Colonel Kenwynton’s head was in a whirl. Had he dreamed this thing, this story of family jewels and important papers stowed in a knapsack and hidden on Duciehurst plantation? So sudden was the confirmation of the war-time legend, so hard it came on the revelation of last night in the turbulent elements on the verge of the sand-bar thatit scarcely seemed fact. He had not had time to think it over, to canvass the strange chance in his mind. Treherne had declared that for forty years he had been an inmate of an insane asylum. Without analyzing his own mental processes Colonel Kenwynton was aware that he had taken it for granted that the story was a vain fabrication of half-distraught faculties, an illusion, a part of the unreasoning adventure that had summoned him forth from his bed in the midnight to stand knee-deep in the marsh to hear a recital of baffled rights and hidden treasure. In all charity and candor he had begun to wonder that Hugh Treherne should find himself now beyond the bounds of detention. In these corroborative developments, however, his opinion veered and he made a plunge at further elucidation of the mystery.
“Mr. Ducie, I should be glad to know what relation you are to Lieutenant Archibald Ducie, who died of typhoid in a hospital in Vicksburg during the war?”
Ducie answered in a single word, “Nephew.”
“Then you are George Blewitt Ducie’s grandson.”
“Grandson,” monosyllabic as before.
The old man thought himself a strategist of deep, elusive craft. For the sake of his friend, Captain Treherne, and his plaintive disability; for the sake of the implied trust accepted in the fact that he had received this confidence, he must seek to know the truth while he screened the motive. “Well, since these old world clavers are mighty interesting to an ancient fossil such as I am—I must look backward having, you know, no future in view,—wasn’tthere some talk of a lost document, a deed of trust missing, mislaid,—what was it about—a Duciehurst mortgage?”
“Areleaseof a mortgage,” replied Ducie, his words coming with the impetus and fury of hot shot. “The lost paper was a release of a mortgage, a quit-claim, signed and witnessed, but not registered. There were no facilities at the time to record legal papers, not a court nor a clerk’s office open in the country, which was filled with contending armies.”
Mr. Floyd-Rosney had finished his breakfast and seemed about to rise. The vexation of this discussion was beyond endurance to a proud and pompous man. But it was not his temperament to give back one inch. He stood his ground and presently he began to affect indifference to the situation, placing an elbow on the table and looking with his imperious composure first at one speaker and then at the other. He was not so absorbed, however, that he did not note how his wife loitered over the waffles before her, spinning out the details of the meal that no point of the conversation might escape her.
“I remember now, I remember,” said Colonel Kenwynton, nodding his white head. “It was claimed that the mortgage was lifted, the debt being paid in gold, and that a formal release was executed here in Mississippi and delivered with the original paper, though not noted in the instrument of registration.”
“There being no courts in operation,” interpolated Ducie, obviously as restive as a fiery horse.
“And by reason of the intervention of the Federal lines and the sudden deaths of the two principals to the transaction the promissory notes, thussecured on the plantation, were not returned to the maker, but remained in Tennessee, where Mr. Carroll Carriton had deposited them in a bank for safekeeping.”
“Is this a fairy-story, Colonel Kenwynton?” sneered Floyd-Rosney, his patience wearing thin under the strain upon it, and beginning to deprecate and doubt the effect on his wife.
“No, it is a story of the evil genii,” said Ducie, significantly.
“You mean War and Confusion, and Loss,” said Floyd-Rosney, in bland interpretation, and apparently in excellent temper. “They are, indeed, the evil genii. But you will please to observe, Colonel Kenwynton, that the executors of the mortgagee, Mr. Carroll Carriton, could not accept this unsupported representation of an executed release of the mortgage. The executors had the registered mortgage, with no marginal notation of its satisfaction, and they had the promissory notes. They sued the estate of George Blewitt Ducie on the promissory notes and foreclosed on Duciehurst.”
“I remember, I remember,” said Colonel Kenwynton, “and although at the period when the mortgage was made it was for a sum inconsiderable in comparison with the value of the property Duciehurst went under the hammer in the collapsed financial conditions subsequent to the war for less than the amount of the original indebtedness, plantations being a drug on the market, and the executors of the mortgagee bought it in for the Carriton estate.”
“The executors proceeded throughout under the sanction of the court,” said Floyd-Rosney. “Of course, I would have the utmost sensitiveness to theposition of an interloper or usurper, but in this instance there can be no such suggestion. No papers could be produced by the defendant, and a wild legend of the loss of such documents could not withstand the scrutiny of even the least cautious and strict chancellor. The fact that Carroll Carriton happened to be in Mississippi at that time and that George Blewitt Ducie was known to have aggregated a considerable sum in gold by a successful blockade-running scheme of selling cotton in Liverpool was dwelt upon by the counsel for the Ducie heir as corroborative evidence that the two principals to the transaction met expressly to lift the incumbrance, but this contention was not admitted by the court.”
He paused for a moment. Then he turned directly upon Ducie. “While I should be sorry, Mr. Ducie, if you should grudge me my rightful holding, I observe that your brother does not share your view. He acquiesced in the existing status by renting certain of these lands while in my uncle’s possession before I succeeded under the will.”
“By no means, by no means,” cried Ducie, furiously. “He is no tenant of yours. He only purchased the standing crop of cotton from your uncle’s tenant, who was obliged to leave the country for a time—shot a man. But, as I understand it, you could not plead that acquiescence, even if it existed, in the event that the release could be found,—take advantage of your own tort in the foreclosure of a mortgage duly paid.”
“Oh, if you talk of ‘torts,’ this ‘knowledge is too excellent for me, I cannot attain unto it.’”Floyd-Rosney retorted, lightly.
His wife still held her fork in her hand, but he significantly placed her finger-bowl beside her plate. Then he rose. “Any rights that you can prove to my estate of Duciehurst, Mr. Ducie, will be gladly conceded by me. Kindly remember that, if you please.”
His wife was constrained to rise and he stood aside with a bow to let her pass first down the restricted space between the tables and the wall. They were out on the guards when she lifted her eyes to his and laid her hand on his arm.
“Why did you never tell me that the property which has lately come to you really belongs to the Ducies?”
He stared down at her, too astonished to be angry.
“Why? Because it is a lie. The Ducies have not a vestige of a right to it.”
“Oh, no, no. The Ducies would never seek to maintain a lie. Only they can’t substantiate their claim on account of the disastrous chances of war.”
She put her hands before her face and shook her head. When she looked up again there were vague blue circles beneath her eyes. The nervous stress of the incident and some unformulated association with the idea were obviously bearing on her heavily.
“It seems to me that we ought not to keep it,” she faltered.
“Keep it!” he thundered. “Why, we, that is our predecessors, have owned it for the last forty years, without a question. Why, Paula, are you crazy? The whole affair went through the courts forty years ago. ‘Ought not to keep it!’ The Ducie heir, this man’s father, who was then a minor, had not ascrap of paper nor one material witness, only the general understanding in the country that as Carroll Carriton happened to be in Mississippi at the time, and George Blewitt Ducie had a lot of specie from running his cotton through the blockade to England, he paid off the mortgage in gold. But that was mere hearsay, chiefly rumor of the gabble of the men who, it was claimed, had witnessed the execution of the quit-claim, and who took occasion to die immediately thereafter.”
“There is some inherent coercive evidence, to my mind, of the truth of those circumstances,” she declared. “It is too hard that the Ducies should have paid the money owed on the mortgage and then lose the place by foreclosure, and, oh, for less than the amount of the original debt.”
“But, Paula, can’t you see there is not a grain of proof that they ever paid the money? How, when, where? We held the promissory notes and the registered deed of trust and the court did not even take the matter under advisement.”
“But you know the confusion of the times,—no courts of record, no mail facilities or means of communication.”
“Much exaggerated, I believe. But at all events we had the promissory notes and the registered mortgage and they had their cock-and-bull story.”
“Oh, I should like to give it back,—it would be so noble of you. I cannot bear that we should own what the Ducies claim is theirs, and I feel sure that if it is not theirs in law it is by every moral sanction. And for such a poor price!—to lose the whole estate for the little amount, comparatively, of the debt!It is too sharp a bargain for us. How much was the amount for which the executors bought it in?”
His face changed and he did not answer. It had not been a pleasant morning, and his imperious temper had been greatly strained. “I remember,” he said, satirically, losing his self-control at last, “that you once entertained a tender interest in one of these Messieurs Ducie. I must say that I did not expect it to last so long or to go so far,—to propose to denude me of my very own, one of the finest properties in Mississippi, and vest him with it!”
Her face flushed. Her eyes flashed. “You have broken your promise! You have broken your promise!” She looked so vehement, so affronted, so earnest, that her anger tamed him for a moment.
“It was inadvertent, dear. The circumstances forced it.”
“It was solemnly agreed between us that we would never mention this man, never remember that he existed. When I promised to marry you I told you frankly that I had been engaged to him, and had never a thought, a hope, a wish, but that I might marry him, until I met you.”
“I know, dear, I remember.” His warm hand closed down on her trembling fingers that she had laid on the railing of the guards as if for support.
“It is a matter of pride with me. I have no idea that I should feel so about it if it were any one else. But, of course, I know that he must reproach me for my duplicity, my inconstancy—”
“But you do not reproach yourself,” with a quick, searching glance.
“No, no, I was not inconstant. Only then I had not met you. But I have caused him unhappiness,and a sort of humiliation among his friends, who consider that I threw him over at the last minute, and I cannot bear to own anything that he accounts his. I don’t wanthisland. I don’t wanthishouse. I wish you would deed it all back to him.”
“You tiresome little dunce!” he exclaimed, laughing. “It is one of the largest plantations in acreage, cleared and tillable, in Mississippi, and I really should not like to say how much it is worth, especially now with the price of cotton on the bounce. People would think I was crazy if I did such a mad thing as to deed it back. I should be unfitted for any part in the business world. No one would trust me for a moment. And apart from my own interest, consider our son. What would he think of me, of you, when he comes to man’s estate, if we should alienate for a whim that fine property, of which he might one day stand in dire need. Change is the order of the times. Edward Floyd-Rosney, Junior, may not have a walk over the course as his father did.”
“But, Edward, we are rich—”
“And so would the Ducies be, by hook or by crook, if they knew what is comfortable.” He laughed prosperously. He was tired of the subject, and was turning away as he drew forth his cigar-case. He was good to himself, and fostered his taste for personal luxury, even in every minute manner that would not be ridiculously obtrusive as against the canons of good taste. The ring on the third finger of his left hand might seem, to the casual glance of the uninitiated, the ordinary seal so much affected, but a connoisseur would discern in it a priceless intaglio. The match-box which he heldas he walked away along the guards was of solid gold, richly chased. His clothes were the masterpieces of a London tailor of the first order, but so decorous and inconspicuous in their fine simplicity that but for their enhancement of his admirable figure and grace of movement their quality and cost might have passed unnoticed.
Paula looked after him with an intent and troubled gaze, her heart pulsing tumultuously, her brain on fire. It would never have been within her spiritual compass to make a conscious sacrifice of self for a point of ethics. She could not have relinquished aught that she craved, or that was significant in its effects. To own Duciehurst would make no item of difference in the luxury of their life,—to give it up could in no way reduce their consequence or splendor of appointment. To her the acquisition of a hundred thousand dollars, more or less, signified naught in an estate of millions. They were rich, they had every desire of luxury or ostentation gratified,—what would they have more? But that this prosperity should be fostered, aggrandized by the loss of the man whom she had causelessly jilted, wounded her pride. It was peculiarly lacerating to her sensibilities that her husband should own Randal Ducie’s ancestral estate, bought under the disastrous circumstances of a forced sale for a mere trifle of its value, and that she should be enriched by this almost thievish chance. She could not endure that it should be Randal Ducie at last from whom she should derive some part of the luxury which she had craved and for which she had bartered his love—that he should be bravely struggling on, bereft of his inheritance, in that saneand simple sphere to which she had looked back last night as another and a native world, from which she was exiled to this realm of alien and flamboyant splendor, that suddenly had grown strangely garish and bitter to the taste as she contemplated it. What, indeed, did it signify to her?—She had no part, no choice in dispensing her husband’s wealth. Everything was brought to her hand, regardless of her wish or volition, as if she were a puppet. Even her charities, her appropriate pose as a “lady bountiful,” were not spontaneous. “I think you had better subscribe two hundred dollars to the refurnishing of the Old Woman’s Home, Paula,—it is incumbent in your position,” he would say, or “I made a contribution of five hundred in your name to the Children’s Hospital,—it is expected that in your position you would do something.” Her position—this made the exaction, not charity, not humanity, not generosity. But for the mention in the local journals the institutions of the city would never have known the lavish hand of one of its wealthiest and most prominent citizens. The money would, doubtless, do good even bestowed in this spirit, but the gift had no blessing for the giver, and she felt no glow of gratulation. Indeed, it was not a gift,—it was a tax paid on her position. More than once when she had advocated a donation on her own initiative he had promptly negatived the idea. “No use in that,” he would declare, or the story of destitution and disaster was a “fake.” These instances were not calculated to illustrate her position. She could not endure that it should levy its tribute on Randal Ducie’s future, and she noted the significantfact that always hitherto in mentioning the recent acquisition under his kinsman’s will her husband had avoided the name of the estate which must have acquainted her with its former ownership.
Theweather had been vaguely misting all the dreary morning. Through a medium not rain, yet scarcely of the tenuity of vapor, Paula had gazed at the tawny flow of the swift river, the limited perspective of the banks, the tall looming of the forests, the slate-tinted sky, all dim and dull like a landscape in outline half smudged in with a stump. Suddenly this meager expression of the world beyond was withdrawn from contemplation. In the infinitely dull silence the fall of tentative drops on the hurricane deck was presently audible, and, all at once, there gushed forth from the low-hung clouds a tremendous down-pour of torrents beneath which theCherokee Rosequivered. Paula turned quickly to the door of the saloon, which barely closed upon her before the guards were swept by floods of water.
The whole interior resounded with the beat of scurrying footsteps fleeing to shelter from this abrupt outbreak of the elements. Squads of the passengers, or, sometimes, a single fugitive came at intervals bursting into the saloon, gasping with the effects of surprise, and the effort at speed, laughing, flushed, agitated, recounting their narrow escapes from drenching or submergence. Two or three, indeed, had caught a ducking and were repairing to their staterooms for dry clothing. There was much sound of activity from the boiler deck as the roustaboutsran boisterously in and out of the rain, busied in protecting freight or in sheltering the few head of stock. The whole episode seemed charged with a cheerful sense of a jolt of the monotony.
A group of gentlemen who did not accompany ladies or who were not acquainted with those on board gathered in the forward cabin, but Ducie sat silent and listless in one of the arm-chairs in the saloon. Apparently, he desired to show the Floyd-Rosneys that he perceived no cause for embarrassment in their society and had no intention by withdrawing of ameliorating any awkwardness which his presence might occasion to them. There were very acceptable and cozy suggestions here. Hildegarde Dean sat at the piano with the two old soldiers beside her. The blind Major, who had a sweet tenor voice, albeit hopelessly attenuated now, some tones in the upper register cracked beyond repair in this world, would singsotto vocea stanza of an old war song, utterly unknown to the girl of the present day, and Hildegarde, listening attentively, would improvise an accompaniment with refrain andritornelloin a vague tentative way like one recalling a lost memory. Suddenly she would throw up her head, her hands would crash out the confidenttema, Colonel Kenwynton’s powerful bass tones would boom forth, and the old blind Major’s tremulous voice would soar on the wings of his enthusiasm, and his memories of the days of yore. Meantime, the girl’s fresh young face, between the two old withered masks, would glow, the impersonation of kindly reverent youth and sweet peace and the sentiment of harmony.
It was pleasant to listen as song succeeded song.Hildegarde’s mother, soft-eyed, soft-mannered and graceful, still youthful of aspect, smiled in her sympathetic accord. Two or three of the more elderly passengers now and again recognized a strain that brought back a long vanished day. An old lady had taken out her fancy work and, as she plied her deft needle in the intricate pattern of the Battenberg, she nodded her head appreciatively to the rhythm of the music, and looked as if she had no special desire for her journey’s end or a life beyond the sand-bar.
When the répertoire was exhausted and silence ensued the blank was presently filled by childish voices and laughter. Marjorie Ashley had begun to lead little Ned Floyd-Rosney about, introducing him to the various passengers disposed on the sofas and rocking-chairs of the saloon. In this scion of the Floyd-Rosney family seemed concentrated all its geniality. He was a whole-souled citizen and not only accepted courtesies with jovial urbanity but himself made advances. He had, indeed, something the tastes of a roisterer, and his father regarded, with open aversion, his disposition to carouse with his fellow-passengers. In his arrogant exclusiveness Floyd-Rosney revolted from the promiscuous attentions lavished on the child. He resented the intimacy which the affable infant had contracted with Marjorie Ashley, the two children rejoicing extremely when the old nurse had been summoned to her breakfast, thus consigning him in the interval to the care of his mother, and rendering him more accessible to the blandishments of his new friend. Floyd-Rosney felt that it was not appropriate that he should be thrust forward in this unseemly publicity thus scantily attended. It was the habitof the family to travel in state, with Floyd-Rosney’s valet, the lady’s maid, a French bonne for the boy, in addition to the old colored nurse in whom Mrs. Floyd-Rosney had such confidence that she would not transfer the child wholly to other tendance. The occasion of this journey, however, did not admit of such a retinue. It was a visit of condolence which they had made to an aunt of Mr. Floyd-Rosney who had lost her son, formerly a very intimate friend of his own. She was an aged lady of limited means and a modest home. To descend upon a household of simple habitudes, already disorganized by recent illness and death, with a troop of strange servants to be cared for and accommodated, was manifestly so inappropriate that even so selfish a man as Floyd-Rosney did not entertain the idea, although his wife received in his querulous asides the full benefit of all the displeasure and inconvenience that he experienced from “having to jaunt about the world with no attendant but the child’s nurse.” The nurse, “Aunt Dorothy,” as in the southern fashion she was respectfully called, had, perhaps, found company at breakfast agreeable to her of her own race and condition, and her absence was prolonged, which fact gave Marjorie Ashley the opportunity to make again the round of the group of passengers in the saloon, cajoling little Ned Floyd-Rosney to show them how he pronounced Miss Dean’s Christian name. At every smiling effort she would burst into gurgles of redundant laughter, so funny did “Miff Milzepar’”for “Miss Hildegarde” sound in her ears. He was conscious of a very humorous effect as he repeatedly made the attempt to pronounce this long word under Marjorie’s urgency,gazing up the while with his big blue eyes brimful of laughter, his carmine tinted lips ajar, showing his two rows of small white teeth, his pink cheeks continually fluctuating with a deeper flush, and his beguiling dimples on display. All the ladies and several of the gentlemen caught him up and kissed him ecstatically; so enticing a specimen of joyous, sweet-humored, fresh-faced childhood he presented. His mother’s maternal pride glowed in her smile as she noted and graciously accepted the tribute, but Floyd-Rosney fumed indignant.
“Why don’t you stop that, Paula?” he growled in her ear as he cast himself down on the sofa beside her. “All that kissing is dangerous.”
“It has been going on since the beginning of the world,accelerando, as the opportunities multiply,” she retorted with her satiric little fleer.
“Be pleased to notice that I am serious,” he hissed in his gruff undertone.
“You can easily make me serious,—don’t over-exert yourself,” she said with a sub-current of indignation.
She deprecated this public display of his surly mood toward her. There is no woman, whether cherished or neglected, loving or indifferent, gifted or deficient, who does not arrogate in public the scepter in her husband’s affections, who is not wounded to the quick by the slightest suggestion of reproof, or disparagement, or even the assertion of his independent sentiment when brought to the notice of others. This is something that finds, even in the most long-suffering wife, a keen new nerve to thrill with an undreamed of pain. Paula’s cheek had flushed, her eyes were hot and excited,—indeed,she did not lift them. She could not brook the indignity that the coterie, most of all, Adrian Ducie, should see her husband at her side with a stern and corrugated brow, whispering in her ear his angry rebukes, commands, comments,—who could know what he might have to say to her with that furious face and through his set teeth. The situation was intolerable; her pride groped for a means of escape.
Then she did a thing that she felt afterward she could never have done had she not in that moment unconsciously ceased to love her husband. She shielded him no more as heretofore. She did not sacrifice herself, as was her custom in a thousand small preferences. She did not assume his whim that he might be satisfied, yet incur no responsibility or ridicule. On the contrary, she led the laugh,—she delivered him, bound hand and foot, to the scoffer.
She suddenly rose, and, with her graceful, willowy gait, walked conspicuously down the middle of the saloon. “Ladies and gentlemen, fellow travelers and companions in misery,” she said, swaying forward in an exaggerated bow, “the heir to the throne must not be kissed. Mr. Floyd-Rosney is a victim of the theory of osculatory microbes. You can only be permitted to taste how sweet the baby is through his honeyed words and his dulcet laughter. Why, he might catch a tobacco-bug from these human smoke-stacks, or the chewing-gum habit from Marjorie Ashley. Therefore, you had better turn him over to me and the same old germs he is accustomed to when his muzzer eats him up.”
Forthwith she swung the big child up lightly in her, slender arms and, with gurgles of laughter, devouredhim with her lips, while he squealed, and hugged, and kicked, and vigorously returned the kisses. Then she held him head downward, with his curls dangling and apparently all the blood in his body surging through the surcharged veins of his red face as he screamed in delight.
“Why, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,” said the wondering Marjorie volubly, “everybody on the boat has been kissing Ned ever since he came aboard. The mate says he is so sweet that he took Ned’s finger to stir his coffee with and declared it needed no other sweetening, either long or short. And little Ned believed him and sat on his knee while he ate his breakfast waiting to stir his second cup for him. Ned has got a whole heap of microbes if kissing gives ’em. Why, even that big deer-hound that is freighted to Vicksburg and has been sitting the picture of despair and home-sickness, refusing to eat,—dog-biscuit, or meat, or anything,—just tumbled little Ned over on the deck and licked his face from his hair to his chin. And when he let Ned up at last Ned just hugged the dog, and they kissed each other smack in the mouth. Then they raced up and down the deck among the freight, playing hide and seek till little Ned could hardly stir. Then the deer-hound ate his breakfast, and is sitting down there right now, begging the leadsman for more.”
“Oh, well, then, let him go to his nurse and get his mouth washed out with a solution of carbolic acid or some other anti-toxin,—perhaps that may be a staggerer for the microbes.”
She let the child slide to the floor and then followed the tousled little figure as it sped in a swift trot to her stateroom. He paused for her to turnthe bolt of the door, and as it opened he slipped under her arm and disappeared, microbe-laden, within.
Her husband sat silent, dismayed, amazed, scarcely able to believe his senses. He was of the type of human being who, subtly and especially fitted to cause pain, was not himself adjusted to stoical suffering. He had a thousand sensitive fibers. His pride burned within him like an actual fire. While it was appropriate that in public appearances a wife should seem to be the predominant consideration, there being more grace in a deferential affectation than in a sultan-like swagger, this pose had such scant reality in the domestic economy that when Paula presumed upon it in this radical nonchalance, he was at once astounded, humiliated, and deeply wounded. He found it difficult to understand so strange a departure from her habitual attitude toward him, his relegation to the satiric methods with which she favored the world at large, the merciless exposure to ridicule of his remonstrance, which was, indeed, rather the vent of fretful ill-humor than any genuine objection or fear of infection. The least exertion of feminine tact in response to his wish would have quietly spirited the child away and without comment ended these repugnant caresses of the little fellow by strangers. Floyd-Rosney began to experience a growing conviction that it all was the influence of the presence of Ducie. He had had some queer, not unrelished, yet averse interest in studying in another man the face of the lover whom he had supplanted. He could scarcely have brooked the sight of the man she had loved, to tranquilly mark his facial traits, to appraise his mentaldevelopment, to speculate on his social culture and worldly opportunities. But this was merely his image. Here was his twin brother, his faithful facsimile. Floyd-Rosney had been surprised to note how handsome he was, how obviously intelligent, how dashing. He had been flattered as well,—this was no slight mark of honest preference on the part of Paula, no mean rival he had put aside. He had felt a glow of added pride in the fact, an accession of affection. He had noted the studied calm, the inexpressive pose, the haughty simulation of indifference with which Ducie had sustained the awkwardcontretempsof their meeting, the strain uponsavoir fairewhich the conventions imposed upon the incident.
And now, as he met Ducie’s eyes again, he perceived elation in them, disproportionate, futile, but delighted. It was the most trivial of foolish trifles, Floyd-Rosney said to himself, but this man had seen him set at naught, put to the blush, held up to ridicule by his wife, airily satiric, utterly unmindful of his dignity, nay, despising its tenuity, and leading the laugh at his discomfiture.
Ducie caught himself with difficulty. He was so conscious of the unguarded expression of his face, the look of relish, of triumph, of contempt surprised in his eyes, that he made haste to nullify the effect. The whole affair was the absent Randal’s, and he must take heed that he did not interfere by word or look or in any subtle wise in what did not concern him,—it was, indeed, of more complicated intent than heretofore he was aware. He was a man of very definite tact but he had hardly realized the extent of the endowment until that moment.He appreciated the subtle value of his own impulse, as if it had been another’s, when he said, directly addressing Floyd-Rosney, as if there had been only the element of good-natured joviality in the episode, “I think we are all likely to encounter dangers more formidable than microbes.—Have you any experience of cloud-bursts, Mr. Floyd-Rosney? This fall of water is something prodigious, to my mind.”
In his personal absorptions Floyd-Rosney had not noticed the rain. “Is it more than a ‘season,’ do you think?—the breaking up of this long drought?” Floyd-Rosney quickly adopted the incidental tone.
He was so essentially a proud man that he would fain think well of himself. His credulity expanded eagerly to the hope that to others the episode of the morning might seem, as apparently to this man, only a bit of gay badinage, the feminine insolence of a much indulged wife to her lenient lord and master. To himself it could not bear this interpretation, nor to her. He could never forget nor forgive the impulse that informed it. But he was quick to seize the opportunity to reinstate his self-possession, nay, the only possibility to “save his face” and hold up his head. Such demands his assuming dignity made on the deference of all about him that taken in this wise the incident could hardly appear serious.
“If there were thunder and lightning it might seem the equinoctial,” said Ducie, “although it is something late in the year.”
They had walked together down the saloon and to the forward part of the cabin where they stood at the curving glass front looking out on vacancy.The rain fell, not in torrents now, but in unbroken sheets of gray crystal, opaque and veined with white. As the water struck the guards it rebounded with the force of the downfall in white foam more than a foot high, while sweeping away over the edge with the impetus and volume of a cataract. But for the list of the boat, for theCherokee Rosehad not grounded fair and square on the sand-bar, this flood would have been surging through the saloon, but the rain drove with the gusts and, the windward side being several inches lower than the other, the downpour struck upon it and recoiled from the slant. The sound was something tremendous; the savagery of the roar of the columns of rain falling upon the roof was portentous, sinister, expressive of the unreasoning rage of the tempestuous elements and of the helplessness of human nature to cope with it. Suddenly, whether the turmoil had in some sort abated, or alien sounds were more insistently apparent, a new clamor was in the air,—a metallic clanking, repetitious, constantly loudening, was perceptible from the lower deck. Then ensued a deep, long-drawn susurrus. The engines were astir once more. Obviously, an effort was in progress to get theCherokee Roseoff the bar under her own steam. A babel of joyous, excited comment in the saloon, at the extreme pitch of the human voice, could hardly be heard in the midst of the turmoil without. All agreed that a vast flood must have fallen to raise the river sufficiently to justify the attempt.
“We are below the junction of several tributaries in this vicinity that bring down a million tuns a minute in such weather as this,” commented one of the passengers.
Another, of the type that must have information at first hand, rushed to the door to secure a conference with the Captain, regardless, or, perhaps, unconscious, of the remonstrance of the others. As the door opened in his hand a torrent of water rushed in, traversing the length of the saloon over the red velvet carpet, and a blast of the wind promptly knocked him off his feet, throwing him across the cabin against a huddle of overturned chairs. The other men, with one accord, sprang forward, and it was only with the united strength of half a dozen that the door could be forced to close, although its lock seemed scarcely able to hold it against the pressure from without. For the wind had redoubled its fury. This region is the lair of the hurricane, and there was a prophetic anxiety in every eye.
It is, indeed, well that these great elemental catastrophes are as transient as terrible. Human nerves could scarcely sustain beyond the space of a minute the frightful tumult that presently filled the air. The wind shrilled with a keen sibilance, and shouted in riotous menace that seemed to strike against the zenith and rebound and reëcho anew. The sense of its speed was appalling. The thunderous crashing of the forests on the river bank told of the riving of timber and the up-rooting of great trees laid flat in the narrow path of the hurricane. For in the limitations of the track lies the one hope of escape from this sudden frenzy of the air. Its area of destruction may be fifty miles in length, but is often only a hundred yards or so in width, cut as straight as a road and as regular, when this awful, invisible foe marches through the country. Perhapsthis was the thought in the mind of every man of the little coterie, the chance that theCherokee Rosemight be outside the path of the hurricane. The next moment a hollow reverberation of an indescribably wide and blaring sound broke forth close at hand, as the smoke-stacks of theCherokee Rosecrashed down on the texas and rolled thence on the hurricane deck, the guy wires jangling loose and shivering in keen, metallic tones. The boat yawed over, suddenly smitten, as it were, by one fierce stroke. The furniture, the passengers, all were swept down the inclined plane of the floor of the saloon and against the mirrored doors of the staterooms. An aghast muteness reigned for one moment of surprise and terror. Then cries broke forth and futile and frantic efforts were made to reach the upper portion of the cabin. A wild alarm was heard that the boat was on fire,—that the boat had slipped off the sand-bar and was sinking. Reiterated shouts arose for the officers, the Captain, the clerks, the pilot, the mate, and the tumult without was reflected by the confusion and terror within.
Ducie’s brain seemed awhirl at the moment of the disaster. As he regained his mental poise he saw Mrs. Floyd-Rosney on her knees frantically struggling with the door of her stateroom, the lock evidently having somehow sprung in the contortions of the steamer under the blast. She looked up at him for an instant, but her tongue was obviously incapable of framing a word in the excitement of that tempestuous crisis. Ducie suddenly remembered, what everyone else but the mother had forgotten, that the little boy had scarcely five minutes earlier gone to the stateroom to be dealt with for the kissing microbes.Observing the inadequacy of her efforts Ducie rushed to her assistance and sought, by main strength, to force open the twisted and warped door. It was so difficult to effect an entrance that he began to doubt if this could be done without an axe, when he succeeded in splintering it a trifle where it had already showed signs of having sustained a fracture. Into the aperture thus made he thrust his foot and then wedged in his knee, finally shattering a panel from the frame, to the horror of the prisoners within, whose voices of terror found an echo in Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s anguished exclamations.
Ducie triumphantly lifted out little Ned and then the old colored nurse was dragged through the aperture, scarcely sufficient for the transit.
“There you are, good as new,” cried Ducie genially.
Some of the doors of the staterooms had burst from their fastenings, and were sagging and swaying inward, offering pitfalls for the unwary, and, in that wild and excited group, Ducie alone bethought himself of precaution. “Look out for the boy, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,—he may fall through one of those open doors into deep water or into the furnace,—I don’t know what is now beneath this part of the saloon,—the boat seems twisted and broken to pieces.”
The suggestion of danger to the child was like a potent elixir to Paula. Her eyes, strained and set, recovered their normal look of perception, wild and haggard though they were. She caught the child in her arms and, although trembling and occasionally staggering under his weight, she would not relinquish him to Ducie as he desired, but carried him herselfsafely along the precarious way. Ducie aided her to clamber up the steep incline where the doors ceased and the wall was unbroken, there being here the barber-shop and the office, and the large space utilized as a smoking-room. Through the windows streamed a deluge of rain, and broken glass lay scattered all about.
Most of the passengers had gathered here in an attitude of tense expectancy. A man stood at a speaking-tube and, with a lordly urgency, was insisting that the Captain should take immediate measures to put the passengers ashore in the yawl. It was no moment to relish a conspicuous pose, and Floyd-Rosney was too well habituated to the first place to give it undue value, but he was obviously in his element and carrying all before him. It was a one-sided conversation, but the comprehension of his listeners was quickened by their personal interest in its progress and result.
“No danger?” a sarcastic laugh. “We take the liberty of differing as to that. The boat may go to pieces on the sand-bar.”
“A shelter? yes,—as long as she lasts, but how long will that be? The boat not much injured except in the furnishings and glass? You think not?” very sarcastically.
“Oh, you guarantee? Now what is your guaranty worth to people drowned in one hundred feet of water?”
“No, we won’t wait to be taken off by the next packet. The river is rising, and the sand-bar might be covered. We demand it,—the passengersdemandto be set ashore in the yawl.”
“Well, then, we will hold you and the owners liable.”
“We are not prisoners. What’s that? Responsibility? humanity?—shelter? I’ll take care of the shelter. Duciehurst mansion is scarcely ten miles down the river. I own it, and the yawl could put us in it in a trice.”
“Yes,—we will risk it,—we will risk the wind and the current.Allright. Allright.”
He had carried his point against every protest according to his wont. As he turned, triumphant and smiling, to the anxious, disheveled, drenched group, he had all the pomp and port of a public benefactor. Absorbed in himself and the prospect of his speedy extrication from this uncomfortable and dangerous plight he was utterly unaware that his wife and only child had had urgent need of the succor that they had received from a stranger.
Paula gazed enlightened at Floyd-Rosney as if she saw him for the first time as he was. The scales had fallen from her eyes. His glance met hers. He had no sense of gratulation that she and the boy were safe. He had not known they had encountered special danger. He thought they only shared the general menace which it was his privilege to render less, to annul. He objected to her pose with the boy in her arms. He deemed it inelegant,—as little Ned was much too stalwart for the artistic presentment of the babe in the bosom of graceful maternity,—and the backward cant of her figure thus extremely plebeian. It was not this personal disapproval, however, that informed the coldness in his eyes. The incident of the ridicule to which she had subjected him among these passengers still rankled inevery pulsation. He was glad of the opportunity to confer benefits upon them, from his high position to rescue them from imminent danger, to be reinstated, in their opinion, as a man of paramount influence and value,—a fleer at him should be esteemed, indeed, a self-confessed folly.
“I dare say the old house leaks like a riddle,—I know it is in ruins,” he said, in a large, off-hand, liberal manner, “but it is on solid ground, at any rate, and I shall be glad to entertain this worshipful company there as best I may till we can get a boat that can navigate water and not tow-heads. I know we can’t spend the night here. In fact, the Captain proposes to set us ashore as soon as he is convinced that no boat is coming down,—but, of course, every craft on the river is tied up in such weather as this. If he will set us ashore at Duciehurst with some bedding and provisions I will ask no more.”
There was a murmur of acquiescence and acceptance,—then a general acclaim of thanks, for the wind was still so high that communication was conducted almost in shouts. Nevertheless, Ducie heard very distinctly when Mrs. Floyd-Rosney turned toward him a pale, pained, troubled face.
“You will come, too? You will have no scruple about—about the ownership?” she faltered.
Adrian Ducie laughed satirically. “Not the least scruple in the world. I have the best right there from every point of view,—even his own!—for if my brother is only a lessee, and not the rightful owner, as he contended this morning, Randal is in possession and my welcome is assured in a house of which he is the host.”
“I only thought—I wanted to say——”
The big child was very big in her arms, and had had his share of the suffering from the general tumult and excitement. He was fractious, hungry, and sleepy, although he could not sleep. But he burrowed with his head in her neck and tried to put his cheek before her lips that she might talk to no one but him, and began to cry, although he forgot his grievance midway and attempted to get down on his own stout legs.
“I wanted to say,—you have been so good to me and the baby,—don’t Ned, be quiet, my pet,—that I could not bear for you to remain in danger or discomfort on the boat because of any sensitiveness about our presence at Duciehurst.”
“Don’t you believe it,” he responded cavalierly. “I am not subject to any sensitiveness about Duciehurst. I shall have the very best that Duciehurst can afford and be beholden to nobody for it.”
A diminutionin the floods of rain began to be perceptible, and the extreme violence of the wind was abated. Now and then a gust in paroxysmal fury came screaming down the river, battering tumultuously at the shattered doors and windows of the wreck, setting all the loose wires and chains to clattering, and showing its breadth and muscle by tearing up some riverside tree and carrying it whirling as lightly as a straw through the air above the tortured and lashed currents of the stream. The clouds, dark and slate-tinted, showed occasionally a white transparent scud driving swiftly athwart their expanse, which gave obvious token of the velocity of the wind, for, although the hurricane was spent, the menace of the stormy weather and the turbulent, maddened waters was still to be reckoned with. It was scarcely beyond noon-day, yet the aspect of the world was of a lowering and tempestuous darkness. The alacrity of the Captain in getting them afloat argued that he now accorded more approval to the plan than when it was first suggested, and that, although he would not have assumed the responsibility of the removal of the passengers at such imminent risk, he was glad to forward it when it was of their own volition, indeed insistence. A fact that his long riparian knowledge revealed to him was not immediately apparent tothe passengers until the yawl was about to be launched,—the sand-bar was in process of submergence. The rise of the river was unprecedented in so short an interval, due to the fall of the vast volume of rain. During the last ten minutes the Captain began to realize that it was beyond the power of prophecy to judge what proportion of the tow-head would be above water within the hour. It was not difficult to launch the yawl from the twisted timbers of the deck. It swung clear and slipped down with a smart impact, rocking on the tumultuous current as if there were twenty feet of water beneath it.
“Where the yawl is now was bare sand ten minutes ago,” commented Floyd-Rosney.
This fact imparted courage to the weak-hearted who had held back at the sight of the weltering expanse of the great river, the sound of the blasts of the strong wind, and the overwhelming downpour of the rain. They were disposed now to depend upon Mr. Floyd-Rosney, who was so masterful and knowing, and who shared all their interest, rather than the Captain, whose conservative idea seemed to be to stick to the boat at all hazards, and to what might be left of the tow-head.
“This is the season of dead low water,” he argued. “This rain is local,—the rise of the river is only temporary.”
But he had the less influence with them, because they felt that he was complicated by his duty to the owners of the boat and the shippers of freight, and also the traditions that forbid the Captain’s abandonment of his deck till the last moment.
He did not resent the discarding of his opinion,but was quite genial and hearty as he stood on the guards and himself directed the men who were handling the yawl.
“It may be the best thing,—if she doesn’t capsize,” he admitted,—“though I wouldn’t advise it.”
Whereupon the weak-hearted again began to demur.
“Don’t discourage us, Captain,” said Floyd Rosney, frowning heavily, “we have no other resource.”
“I shall use my best judgment, Mr. Floyd-Rosney,” the Captain retorted. “I am not here to encourage you in fool-hardy undertakings. We know where we are now,—and we have the yawl and the other boats as a last resource. The weather, too, may clear. It can’t rain and blow forever.”
“I shall show my opinion by taking to the boat and carrying my family with me,” said Floyd-Rosney loftily. “Any one who wishes to go with us will be very welcome at Duciehurst.”
He already had on his overcoat and hat and the other passengers, with their suit-cases or such other possessions as could be handed out of their almost inverted staterooms by the grinning roustabouts, began to make their precarious descent to the lower deck on the reeking and slippery stair, all awry and aslant.
“Take care of the Major,—oh, take care of the Major,” cried Hildegarde Dean, almost hysterically, as the old man was lifted by his colored servant, who had been with him as a “horse-boy” in the army, and who, though grizzled, and time-worn, and wrinkled, was still brawny and active. In fact, he had lived in great ease and competence owing to his special fidelity and utility in the Major’s infirmities,since “Me an’ de Major fout through de War.” In fact, if old Tobe might be believed, the majority of the deeds of valiance in that great struggle were exploited by “Me an’ de Major.”
“Sartainly,—sartainly,” his big voice boomed out on the air, responsive to the caution, “Me an’ de Major have been through a heap worse troublements dan dis yere.”
And, indeed, surely and safely he went down the stair, buffeted by the wind and drenched by the rain and the spray leaping from its impact on the surface of the water.
Hildegarde herself descended as easily as a fawn might bound down a hill, to Colonel Kenwynton’s amazement, accustomed to lend the ladies of his day a supporting arm. She sprang upon the gunwale of the yawl in so lightsome a poise that it scarcely tipped beneath her weight before she was seated beside the old blind soldier, joyous, reassuring and hopeful.
“It is hard to be in danger and unable to help others or even to see and judge of the situation,” he said meekly, bending forward under the down-pour, his face pallid and wrinkled, its expression of groping wistfulness most appealing.
“Yes, indeed,” she assented, her voice sounding amidst the rain like the song of a bird from out a summer shower. “But I think all this hubbub is for nothing,—the sky is going to clear, I believe, toward the west. Still, the next packet can take us off at Duciehurst as well as from theCherokee Rose.” “And, Major,” with a blithe rising inflection, “I can see a veritable ante-bellum mansion, and you can go over it with me and explain the life of theold times. You can refurnish it, Major! You can tell me what ought to stand here and there, and what sort of upholstery and curtains the ‘Has-Beens’ used to affect.”
His old face was suddenly relumed with this placid expectation; his brain was once more thronged with reminiscences. He lifted his aged head and gazed toward the clearing west and the radiant past, both beginning to relent to a gentle suffusion of restored peace.
In this transient illumination the great dun-tinted forests that lined the banks showed dimly, as well as the vast river swirling intervenient, tawny, murky, but with sudden mad whorls of white foam where the current struck some obstruction flung into its course by the storm. The wreck of theCherokee Rosewas very melancholy as a spectacle since, but for the hurricane, she would have been floated in five minutes more of the deluge of rain. The yawl seemed a tiny thing, painfully inadequate, as it rocked with a long tilt on the swaying undulations of the current. The preparations for departure were going swiftly forward; another boat was in process of loading with material comforts, cots, bedding, all under tarpaulins, boxes and hampers of provisions, and the trunks and suit-cases of passengers. Since escape was now possible and at hand, one or two of the faint-hearted began to experience anew that reluctance to removal, that doubt of an untried change so common to the moment of decision. “It is a long way—ten miles in this wind,” said one, “how would it do for a few of us to try that swamper’s shack on the bank? The yawl is overloaded, anyhow.”
“Now, Icanadvise you,” said the Captain definitely. “It won’t do at all to trust river-side rats. You might be robbed and murdered for your watch or the change in your purse. I am not acquainted with that swamper,—I speak from precedent. And how can you judge if the shack is above water now,—or whether it has been blown by the hurricane down the river?”
“Still, the yawlisoverloaded,” said Floyd-Rosney, with a trifle of malice. He was bent on exploiting the situation to his own commanding credit, and the proposition, reiterated anew, to withdraw for a different course, nettled his troublous and sensitive pride.
The next man who stepped into the yawl was the one who had advanced this divergent theory, and Floyd-Rosney flashed a glance of triumph at his wife, who still stood with the child in her arms at the warped rail of the promenade deck. She was pale, anxious, doubtful, in no frame of mind to furnish her wonted plaudits, the incense of wifely flatteries on which his vanity lived. These others had admired his initiative, had gladly adopted his plans, were looking to him with a unanimity of subservience that had quite restored the tone of his wonted arrogance. He could ill brook to see her with that discouraged questioning in her face, gazing forth over the forbidding gray water, letting first one, then another pass her to a place in the yawl. She should have been the first to board it,—to show her faith by her works.
He approached her with a rebuking question.
“Why do you lug that child around, Paula?” he demanded. “He will break your back.” Hestepped forward, as if to lift the little fellow from her arms, but she precipitately moved a pace backward. Paula’s grisly thoughts were of the dungeon, the trap of the warped stateroom,—whence the boy was liberated by a stranger, while his father, unthinking and unnoting, was absorbed in his own complacence, in his busy and arrogant pose. No,—she would not let the child go again, she would hold him in her arms if his weight broke every bone in her body till they were all in safety.
“I don’t want to risk that yawl,” she said querulously. “I think the Captain knows best,—he has had such long experience. The yawl looks tricky, and the water is fearful. We ought to take to the yawl as a last resort, when the steamer can’t house us. That is always the custom. It is only in cases of absolute necessity that the yawl is used.”
It would be difficult to say whether he were more surprised or incensed, as for a moment, with short breaths and flashing eyes, he gazed at her. He was of an impetuous temper, yet not beyond schooling. He had had a lesson, he had felt the keen edge of her ridicule this morning, and he would not again lay himself liable to a public exhibition.
“Why, you must be a graduated pilot to know so much about the river,” he cried with a rallying laugh. “The kid and I are going in the yawl at all events. Unloose your hold,” he added in a furious undertone. “He is mine,—he is mine,—not yours.”
He had laid his hand on both hers as they clasped the child. Floyd-Rosney was still smiling and apparently gracious and good-humored, which might have seemed much, thus publicly withstood in this moment of excitement and stress. He was resolvedthat he would not lower his pride by an open and obvious struggle. He did not consider her pride. He forced her fingers apart, invisibly under the folds of the child’s cloak, by an old school-boy trick of suddenly striking the wrist a sharp blow. The muscles must needs relax in the pain, the hold give way, and, as the boy was about to slip from her clasp, his father called for the nurse, placed the child in the arms of the old servant and consigned them both to a stout roustabout who had them in the yawl in a trice. Without a word of apology, of justification, of soothing remonstrance, Floyd-Rosney turned away from his wife with brisk cheerfulness and once more addressed himself to the matter in hand.
Paula felt that if this had been her husband of yesterday it would have broken her heart. But that identity was dead,—suddenly dead. Indeed, had he ever lived? She wondered that the revulsion of feeling did not overpower her. But she was consciously cool, composed, steady, without the quiver of a muscle. She made no excuses to herself in her introspection for her husband,—gave him no benefit of doubt,—urged no palliation of his brutality. Yet these were not far to seek. The hurricane had come at a crisis in his mental experience. He had been publicly held up to ridicule, even to reprehension, by his own subservient wife. He had been released from this pitiable attitude by some unimaginable impulse in the brother of the man whom she had jilted at the last moment, and thus confused, absorbed, scarcely himself at the instant of the stupendous crash, he had lost sight of the fact, if he had earlier noticed, that the child wasnot with her, and in the saloon,—his latest glimpse of the boy was in her arms. It was natural that he did not witness the rescue by Ducie, for he was planning an escape for them all, and, surely, it was her place to defer to his views, his seniority, his experience, and be guided by him rather than take the helm herself. Naught of this had weight with her. She only remembered the provocation that had elicited her fleer, his furious whisper of objection, his censorious interference, the humiliation so bitter that she could not lift her head while his rebukes hissed in her ears before them all. Then, in that terrible moment of calamity, he had not thought of her, of their son,—had not rushed to gather them in his arms, that they might, at least, die together. Doubtless, he would have said they could die together in due time,—it was not yet the moment for dying—and he was preparing to postpone that finality as far as might be.