sunlight--near enough by."
"Yes. But between stars there is no near-by, is there?"
"That depends on who's looking, I think. We mustn't impute human eyes to
God--or angels--or saints. You remember the word: 'Darkness and light
are both alike to thee'?"
"Yes," pensively said Hugh, rejoicing in this converse yet wondering why
it made him feel so childish to speak his best while Hayle's twins
showed up in so manly a fashion when they spoke their worst. "Yes, I
thought of that, too. Yet I was glad to believe there will always be
plenty of starlight for those who love it----"
"Wow!" yelled Ramsey in his ear.
With a gulp he whirled and faced her where, limp with laughter, she hung
and swung on the captain's chair. Its occupant quietly rose. The old
nurse wrung her hands, and Ramsey, in an agony of mirth and dismay,
cringed back on her. Suddenly the maiden stood at her best height and
with elaborate graciousness said:
"I _hope_ I haven't interrupted!"
The father's hand appeasingly touched the son's while playfully he said:
"You have a hopeful nature, Miss Ramsey." And then, as her disconcerted
eyes widened, he asked: "Where did you come from just now?"
He saw that if she spoke she must weep. Instead she jauntily waved a
whole arm backward and upward to the pilot-house. Then, her self-command
returning, she remarked, for Hugh in particular: "It's nice up there.
They don't snub you." She twitched a shoulder at him, made eyes to his
father, and once more tinkled her laugh, interiorly, as though it were a
door-bell.
The captain was amused, yet he gravely began to ask: "Does your
mother----?"
"Know I'm out? She doth. First time I've been out o' bed this late in
all my long and checkered career."
"If she does, Miss Ramsey, will you go up to the pilot once more and
tell him to land the boat at the wood-yard just this side of Bonnabel
plantation?"
Her mouth fell open: "Who, me? Tell the--?" She swept the strategist
with a quick, hurt glance, but beamed again beneath his kind eyes. "_I
get your idea_," she said, snatched the nurse's arm, and hurried off
with her, humming and tripping the song she had quoted.
The captain looked again into "infinite space." The wide scene was
shifting. High beyond the _Votaress's_ bow the stars of the west swung
as if they shifted southward. The moon crossed her silvering wake from
larboard quarter to starboard. The _Antelope_ shone close ahead. "To me,
Hugh," he lightly resumed, "this boat, full of all sorts of people,
isn't so much like your swarm of stars as it is like just one little
whole world."
"Yes," said the son, facing him sidewise so that no Ramsey might again
surprise them: "I see it that way too. Father"--the father had stirred
as if to leave him--"I want to tell you some things about our past. But
I can't tell them piecemeal. I must find some time when you're off
watch."
"And when Miss Ramsey's asleep?"
"Yes."
"Why have you never told me before?"
"I've tried for years. The power wasn't in me. I've had to grow up to
it. But, as you say, 'now, at last,' I can do it."
The captain turned away and looked up to the dim pilot-house. Out of it
came the tranquil voice of the pilot who earlier had talked with the
twins: "Caving bank above has planted snags at that wood-yard, sir.
Whippoorwill Ferry's a better landing, on t'other side, head o' the
crossing."
"Well, Mr. Watson, land there."
The boat was sweeping close by the west-shore village of Bayagoula, that
lay asleep where the stream for a brief space widened to a mile. Her
veering jack-staff hid the north star a moment, then crept to right of
it and pointed up a five-mile reach of dim waters and dimmer shores,
hard on the heels of the panting _Antelope._ But the captain's eye
lingered behind and above him. Between him and the pilot-house, softly
veiled by its moonlight shadow, stood in unconscious statuesqueness on
the front overhang of the texas roof, between the towering chimneys,
Ramsey.
Her rippling curls and slim shoulders stood above the shade that
enveloped the rest of her form and showed dark against the feeble light
of the moon at her back. As he looked she uttered a droll sound--fair
counterfeit of the harsh note a mocking-bird speaks to himself before
his nightly outburst--and then broke forth in a voice as untrained, but
as fresh and joyous and as reckless of reproof or praise, as the bird's:
"'O, the lone, starry hours give me, love,
When still is the beautiful night----'"
At sight of a second and third figure he moved that way, while below the
singer's feet sounded a mother's moan: "Ramsey! mon Dieu! my chile! come
down from yondeh!"
The girl's eyes stayed in the sky, but one mutinous foot so keenly smote
the roof that her nurse, approaching behind, stopped short, and from
Hugh came a laugh, a thin, involuntary treble, which caused Ramsey
visibly to flinch.
"Ramsey!" entreated her mother again, but----
"Just this one moment, beloved mom-a! Listen, oh, listen, everybody! to
my midnight thought!" The rhapsodist struck a stiffer pose and began
with all her voice, "Since infinite space is lighted only by the stars!
their rush and roll--te rum te riddle, te rum te ree----"
"Ramsey!"
"--Is an eternal starlight!" The girl hugged and kissed her black nurse:
"Oh, mammy Joy! is that absurd to you?"
"Ram-zee!" cried the mother. But a toll of the great bell silenced her.
Another solemnly followed, and when a third completed the signal to
land, the staggering footsteps of the vanished girl dragging old Joy
with her in full retreat were a relief to every ear. As madame turned to
say good night a last bleat came out of the darkness:
"Please don't, anybody, tell about the _Quakeress_ to-night!"
XIV
THE COMMITTEE OF SEVEN
"Hitherto," said the senator, in his stateroom, to the bishop and the
judge, "there really has been no need to take any assertive step."
He was explaining his slowness as head of the deputation and was glad,
he said, to have a word apart with these two. The room could not seat
seven and for the moment the other four were at the bar, where standing
was so much easier than elsewhere.
Their business, the seven's, he added, was with the captain, and
officially the captain had gone off duty at eight o'clock and was on
again only now, at midnight, in the "middle watch." Even yet there need
be no hurry; what they wanted done could not be done before early
morning, at Prophet's Island.
The bishop approved. "Don't cross the bridge till you get to it," he
quoted.
The judge--whose elderly maiden sister was aboard and abed but
awake and alarmed and amazed and astounded that he should be so
helpless--assented, too, but thought there was now no call for further
delay; Prophet's Island was nearer every moment and the sooner "those
people" were well ashore the safer--and easier--for everybody.
"I was giving our numbers time to grow," remarked the senator.
"And the cholera time to spread?" queried the judge.
"We're but a small minority yet," persisted the senator.
"A minority always rules," smilingly said the bishop.
The senator smiled back. "There are two or three hundred of those deck
passengers alone," he responded.
"Senator," said the judge, "what of that? We've taken upon ourselves to
speak for all the cabin passengers on this boat, whether as yet they
agree with us or not. They are as numerous as those foreigners, sir,
and, my God! sir, _they_ are our own people. Self-preservation is the
first law!"
"Oh, surely you know," protested the senator, "I'm with you, heart and
soul! We must extricate these people of our own from a situation whose
desperateness most of them do not recognize. We'll go to the captain
now, as soon as--as we must. But let us agree right here that whatever
we require him to do we also require him to do of his own free will. He
must shift no responsibility upon us. You have, of your sort, bishop, a
constituency quite as sensitive as the judge's or mine, and we don't
want to give any one a chance to start a false story which we might find
it difficult to run down. And so we can hardly be too careful----"
The absent four had returned while he spoke. "Sir," interrupted the
general, whose th's were getting thick, "ththat is what we have
been--too careful!"
The hearts of the four were on fire. A chance word of the barkeeper,
they said, had sent them to the stateroom of Hayle's twins, who, with
tears of wrath, had confessed themselves prisoners; prisoners of their
own word of honor--"after being knocked down----"
"What?" cried senator, judge, and bishop.
"Yes, sirs, one of them literally knocked down by the acknowledged
minion of one Courteney, for having ventured to differ politically with
another and for daring to mention the pestilence to a third."
The seven poured out to the guards and started for the roof. The bell up
there tolled for the landing at Whippoorwill Ferry. About to ascend a
stair, they uncovered and stood aside while Madame Hayle and a cabin
maid passed down on their way back to the immigrants' deck. By the time
the roof was reached the boat was close inshore. The captain had begun
to direct her landing. The engine bells were jingling. Tall torch
baskets were blazing on the lower-deck guards, and another burial
awaited only the running out of the big stage. Now it hurried ashore, a
weirdly solemn pageant. The seven, looking down upon it, regained a more
becoming composure. When the swift task was done, the torches quenched,
and the boat again under way and her movements in control of the pilot,
they once more looked for the captain. His chair was empty, but his room
was bright and its door ajar. Within, however, was only the wholly
uninspiring figure of Hugh, at a table, where he was just beginning to
write. He rose and seemed sedately to count his visitors.
"We are looking for the captain," said the senator.
"He's down on the after lower deck, sir."
"Oh!" The bushy brows of the inquirer lifted. "Will you send for him? We
can't very well go down there."
"That's true, sir," said Hugh, feeling the irony, "unless you wish to
help." He looked from one to another, but none of the seven wished to
help.
"Do you mean to say," broke in the general, "ththat we can't sssee ththe
captain of ththis boat unless we nurse the cholera?"
"No, sir, I don't mean that, though he's very much occupied. If you will
state your business to me I will send for him unless I can attend to it
myself."
"Why, my young friend," said the senator, "does that strike you as due
courtesy to a delegation like this?"
"No, sir, ordinarily it would not be, sir. But my father--I am the
captain's son--knowing you were coming and what you were coming for,
waited for you as long as he could. Just now he is extremely busy, sir,
doing what he can--short-handed--for the sick and dying." The captain's
son, in spite of himself, began to warm up. "Those hundreds of people
down yonder, sir, are homeless, friendless, dumb--you may say--and in
his personal care. He has left me here to see that your every proper
wish has every attention. Gentlemen, will you please be seated?" He
resumed his own chair and at top speed began again to write.
It was a performance not pleasant for any one. He felt himself culpably
too full of the resentful conviction that this ferment, whose ultimate
extent nobody could predict, was purely of those Hayle twins' brewing,
and he knew he was speaking too much as though to them and them alone.
He was the only Courteney who could do this thing so badly, yet it must
be done. Still writing, he glanced up. Not a visitor had stooped to sit.
He dipped his pen but rose up again. "What can I do for you, sirs?"
"We have told you," said the senator. "Send for the captain!"
"Will you please say what you want him for?"
"No, sir! We will tell him that when he comes!"
"He'll not come, sir. I shan't send."
The senator glared steadily into the youth's face, and the youth,
forgetting their disparity of years, glared as steadily back. The bishop
blandly spoke:
"Senator, will you allow me, for an instant--? Mr. Courteney, you will
admit that this steamboat is not your property?"
"She's as much mine as anybody's, sir. I am one third owner of her."
The bishop's pause was lengthy. Then--"Oh, you are! Well, however that
may be, sir, your father ought to realize--and so ought you, sir--that
we cannot consent to conduct an affair like this in a second-handed
way."
"It really isn't second-handed, sir; but if you think it is and if
you're willing to put your request in writing and will dictate it to me,
here and now----"
The senator exploded: "Damn the writing!" He whirled upon the bishop:
"Your pardon, sir!"
"Some one had to say it," jovially answered the bishop. Everybody
laughed. Hugh dipped his pen once more.
"Shall I put that down, also?" he asked, looking to the bishop and the
senator by turns.
"Put what?--down where?" they asked. "What are you writing there,
anyhow?"
"Our conversation."
The senator stiffened high: "For what, sir?"
And the bishop asked, "A verbatim report to the captain?"
"Yes, sir, and the newspapers."
"Insolence!" exclaimed the general, but was hushed by the squire, though
the squire's own brow lowered.
"Who will vouch for your accuracy?" loftily asked the senator.
"I'll send now for witnesses." The youth reached toward a bell-cord. But
the senator lifted a hand between:
"Stop, sir. There will be nothing to witness. Nevertheless you know, of
course, that this is not the end."
"I see that, sir."
"When your passengers awake in the morning, your real, your cabin
passengers, they will, they _shall_ awake to the deadly hazard of their
situation. Gentlemen, there will be available landings beyond Prophet's
Island. We shall reach Turnbull's Island by noon and Natchez Island
before sundown. Meantime, sir, this mortal peril to hundreds of our best
people is wholly chargeable to your captain."
"Captain and owners," said Hugh.
"Captain and owners! Good night, sir."
"Good night, gentlemen."
For half an hour the _Votaress_ headed west. Then the north star crept
forward from starboard beam to bow and then back from bow to larboard
beam. Plaquemine town, bayou, and bend swept past, and as she laid her
course east for Manchac bayou, bend, and point a tranquil voice came up
to the pilot-house from the darkness forward of the bell: "Where is
Hugh, Mr. Watson?"
"He's just turned in, sir."
XV
MORNING WATCH
Twinkled quite away were the four hours of middle watch.
All the gentler turnings of the journey's first hundred miles were
finished and the many hundred miles of its wider contortions were well
begun. One winding of thirty-five miles had earned but twelve of
northward advance. But at any rate that was now far downstream. Baton
Rouge, the small capital of the State, crowning the first high bank you
reach, was some six miles astern. In the dark panorama of the shores,
decipherable only to a pilot's trained sight, the unbroken procession of
sugar estates was broken at last and the shining _Votaress_, having
rounded a point from north to west, was crossing close above it with
Seven Lakes and the Devil's Swamp on her starboard bow. The _Antelope_
glimmered a short mile behind.
It was the first mate's watch. On the hurricanedeck he paced at ease
across and across near the front rail, where at any instant his eye
could drop to its truer domain, the forecastle. The westerly moon hung
high over the larboard bow. Now the boat ran so close along the lowland
that in smiting the water each bucket of her shoreward wheel drew a
separate echo from the dense wood, as if a phantom boat ran beside her
among the moss-draped cypresses. Ramsey! what thrills you were missing!
She knew it. In her sleep she lay half consciously resenting the loss.
Under the next point a close turn led into a long northeastward reach,
and as the _Votaress_ bore due north across it the morning star, at one
flash, blazed out on the dark world and down the flood. Through her
stateroom's high window its silvery beam found Ramsey in the upper berth
and opened her eyelids with a touch. Staring on the serene splendor, she
would soon have slept again, but just then the many lights of a large
steamer glided out of the next bend above and Ramsey sprang to an elbow
to watch its swift approach and await her own boat's passing call and
the other's reply. Now the _Votaress_ tolled a single stroke, as if to
cry: "Hail, friend, we take the starboard."
With bird-like speed the shining apparition came on, and after a few
seconds--that seemed endless--its soft, slow note of assent floated over
the waters. Crossing the star's slender path on a long oblique, the
wonder came, came on, came close, glittered by, and was gone; now
lowland and flood lay again in mystic shadows, and the heavenly beacon
of dawn, shedding a yet more unearthly glory than before, swung nearer
and nearer to the _Votaress's_ course until it vanished forward of the
great wheel-house as she headed northeast.
The very pilot at the helm was not more awake than the reclining Ramsey
as she pondered the hours, each one a year, that had passed since she
came aboard. All their happenings, dark and bright; all their speeches;
all their faces, male, female, aged, adolescent, juvenile, danced
through her fancy with a variety and multiplicity of values which seven
such little country-girl minds as hers, thought she, could hardly make
room for. It seemed as though a shower of coined gold were overflowing
her wee muslin apron of an intelligence and dropping through it. She
could scarcely remain in the berth. Listen! Was her mother awake, in the
lower one? The boat veered a trifle back northward and suddenly again,
hovering over dim water and shore and blazing like a herald angel, was
the morning star, a scant point or so to "stabboard." She chuckled,
softly, at the word.
Gently her name was called, beneath her: "Ramsey?"
She let her face into the pillow and shook with the fun of it. If she
should squeak half a note of reply she would be ordered to stay abed.
Soon the mother rose and began stealthily to dress. No doubt it was to
return to those poor Germans below. The thought was very sobering.
Ramsey yearned to go with her, but knew she might as well ask leave to
ride in the white yawl which, night and day, so incessantly, invitingly
skimmed, zigzagged, foamed, and bounded after the _Votaress_, holding on
to her fantail by its jerking painter.
The yawl reminded her of the boy Hugh. He seemed to belong to
the boat in much the same way as it. He _was_ a boy, nothing
else--humph!--pooh!--though he seemed to think himself the elephant of
the show. A boy, and yet with what a mind! Not that she should ever want
one like it--whoop! what would she ever do with it? No wonder she had
laughed in his face. Without laughter she would have been his tossed and
trampled victim. Laughter was her ladder; the ladder up which the circus
girl runs to sit on the elephant's shoulder.
The lock of the stateroom door whispered. Her mother was going! Now she
was gone! The daughter rose enough to look out on the gliding flood. It
was day. But, night or day, how it intensified existence, this
perpetual, tremulous passing of heaven and earth over and round and by
and beneath one! Every least incident, indoors or out, was large and
vivid, and a mere look from a window became a picture in the memory, to
hang there through life. Nay, a sound was enough, too much. The remote
peck-peck of that carpenter's hammer smote into her mind the indelible
image of the only thing he could be making at such an hour. Trying to be
deaf, she thought of Joy--timely thought! At any moment the old dear
might steal in. She dropped from her berth, and when the actual invasion
came, when Joy appeared, Ramsey was at the wash-stand, splashing like a
canary, while strewn about the cramped place lay a lot of fresh attire,
her Sunday best, brightest, longest.
"Now, you needn't say one word!" she cried.
The old woman bridled to say many, but before she could speak there was
a fervent challenge to answer:
"Do you realize all I've got to attend to to-day?"
The nurse's mouth opened but another question was shot into it: "Has
anybody told about the _Quakeress_?"
There was a limit to forbearance. "Now, Miss Ramsey Hayle, ef dey is
tell it, aw ef dey hain't--to yo' ma--dat's all right an' beseemly. But
fo' you, dat ain't no fitt'n' story fo' you to heah!"
Ramsey stared from her towel with lips apart. "Why, you--I'm going to
hear it!--all!--this day!--or, anyhow, this trip!--from--from--" She
fell upon the nurse's shoulder, convulsed.
"F'om who' is you gwine hear it? Stop, missie, stawp! Dat's madness, dat
laughteh. De Bible say' so! F'm who'--? Lawd! yo' head's a-wett'n' my
breas'-han'kercheh!"
Ramsey drew up, her eyes dancing, but went into a new transport as she
replied: "From the baby elephant!"
"No, you don't, Miss Ramsey Hayle! No, you don't! An' besides, befo' you
heah de story o' de _Quak'ess_ you want to heah de story o' Phyllis."
XVI
PHYLLIS
From earliest childhood the Hugh whom it gave Ramsey such rapture to
nickname had unconsciously worn the dim frown that seemed to her so
droll because at once so scrutinous yet so appealing.
To others that faint shade had never meant more than an inborn mental
painstaking; a mind as steadily at work as the pulse; seemingly
sluggish, really active. But Ramsey, in her stateroom, letting Joy dress
her for all the Sabbath could mean afloat or ashore, could not accept
such a thought. A feminine eagerness to read the masculine brow had
promptly imputed to Hugh's a depth of mystery for which her romantic
young soul demanded a romantic interpretation. Hence, mainly, her hunger
for the story of the _Quakeress_. She had perceived, she thought, a
relation between it and the clouded brow, and was bent on finding for
the brow's owner as amazing a part in the tale as could be contrived by
any piecing together of its facts which did not absolutely mutilate
them. And these facts already she had begun to collect when by the
mention of this "Phyllis" she discovered that old Joy had at least a
share of the facts and under due pressure would yield them up.
"Phyllis?" asked Ramsey, "who was Phyllis?"
"Humph! Neveh hear o' Phyllis? Well, dey wuz reason fo' dat, too.
Phyllis wuz de likeliest yalleh gal I eveh see, not-in-standin' she wuz
my full fus' cousin."
Now, one could be as dark as a sloe and yet have a cousin as yellow as a
marigold, but Ramsey did not see it so. "How can that be?" she laughed,
"when you are so out and out black?" The bare idea seemed too comical
for human endurance.
"I ain't no blackeh'n Gawd made me--oh, Lawd! missie, how I gwine button
you up ef you shif' an' wriggle like dat? Phyllis wuz nuss to all de
Co'teney chil'en. 'Caze dat same day when de new _Quak'ess_ come down de
riveh wid dis same Mahs' Hugh, new-bawn, dah wuz yo' pa on his new boat,
de _Conjuror_----"
"Ow! the _Conqueror_!"
"Yass'm, dat's what I say. And dah wuz yo' ma, an' me, o' co'se, and dah
wuz Phyllis, my full fus' cousin--now, ef you cayn't stop a-gigglin' an'
wrigglin' long enough fo' me to finish dis----"
Ramsey was too unnerved to heed. "How could--" she insisted--"how could
a--a mulatto girl be your first cousin?"
"Now, you dess neveh min' how! Phyllis wa'n't no mullatteh, nohow. She
wuz a quadroom! Heh mullatteh motheh wuz my own sisteh!"
"Oh, you mean half-sister!"
"I means whole sisteh! Miss Hayle, betteh you dess drap dat subjic' now,
an' thaynk Gawd fo' yo' ign'ance!"
"All right! all right! whole sister! go on! were you twins?" The querist
gave a wild start of surprise at herself and sank to the floor.
"Missie," sighed the old woman, "y'ain't neveh in yo' life stopped to
think dat niggehs is got feelin's, is you?"
The speech was hardly begun before the girl was up and about the
protester's neck: "Hush! ple-ease hush! You've said it before, you've
said it before, you've said it before, before!"
The nurse's eyes filled: "Yass, an' what use it been? De wuss thing I
know 'bout good white folks--an' when I says 'good' I means de
best!--dat is, dat dey don't _believe_ niggehs is got feelin's!" It was
hard to speak on, for Ramsey had pushed her into a chair and was in her
lap.
"They do! they do, mammy Joy, they do!" She fell to kissing her, first
slowly, then wildly as Joy insisted: