front. The statesman, with heavy "dear sirs" and heavier smiles, was
buttonholing the elder Courteney, who at every least pause affably
endeavored to refer him to Hugh. The grandson's turn to speak seemed not
to have arrived. The senator was trying to keep it from arriving and
Hugh was glum. Hence it may be doubted if the senator's cigar was really
cocked as high, or that his silk hat was as dingy, his very good teeth
as yellow, his cheeks as hard, or his forehead as knotty as they
appeared to Hugh, or that his tone of superiority, so overbearing last
night, so ingratiating to-day, was any worse for the change. Hugh was
biassed--felt bias and anger as an encumbering and untimely weight. In
self-depreciating contrast he recalled a certain young lady's airy,
winning way--airy way of winning--and coveted it for himself here and
now: a wrestler's nimble art of overcoming weight by lightness; of
lifting a heavy antagonist off his feet into thin air where his
heaviness would be against him. His small, trim grandfather had it, in
good degree; was using it now. Would it were his own in this issue,
where the senator held in his hand the folded petition, having already
vainly proffered it to the commodore, who had as vainly motioned him to
hand it to Hugh. Would the art were his! But he felt quite helpless to
command it, lacking the joyous goodness of heart which in the young lady
so irresistibly redeemed what the senator, the bishop, and the judge's
sister, to themselves, called her amazing--and the Gilmores to each
other called her American--bad manners. It made Hugh inwardly
bad-mannered just to feel in himself this lack, and tempted him to think
what a comfort it would be to apply the wrestler's art physically and
heave the senator overboard.
Said that gentleman--"For you saw I wouldn't let the matter come up at
the table. A lot of those men who signed this paper--which your grandson
suggested last night, you know--" He smiled at Hugh. "Now, I am never
touchy, and I know, commodore, that you're not. But, Lord, so many of
us--maybe Democrats a little more than Whigs--are! We take our politics,
like our bread, smokin' hot." He put away his smile. "My dear sir, to us
the foreigner--as you saw last night at supper--has become a political
problem, a burning question. Yet I propose to keep this whole subject so
unmenacing to you personally, you owners of this boat, that I won't let
a word be risked where any one might take even a tone of voice
unkindly."
"So, then, Hugh can take care of it."
The senator tossed a hand in amiable protest: "Oh, sir, you see it much
too small! My half of it is large enough for me, with forty times this
young gentleman's experience. I don't see just this one boat and trip
and these few hundred native-American citizens in deadly contact with a
few hundred of Europe's refuse. I see--your passengers see--we view with
alarm--a state of affairs--and a test case!"
The old commodore's eyes flashed to retort, but the senator forced a
propitiative smile, adding: "However, let that pass just now, here's
something else."
"Is it also in that paper?"
"It is."
"Tell it to Hugh--or let him read it."
But as the old gentleman would have moved away, the senator, ignoring
the suggestion, stepped across his path:--
"Last night, commodore, this matchless new boat"--he paused to let the
compliment sink in, his eye wandering to Watson, who had sauntered down
from the texas roof--"this _Votaress_, swept past everything that had
backed out at New Orleans ahead of her."
"Built to do it," put in Hugh while the commodore, by a look, drew
Watson to them and the senator flowed on.
XXIV
A SENATOR ENLIGHTENED
"But, lying at Bayou Sara this morning," said the senator, "everything
worth counting left us behind again."
"For the time being," said Hugh.
"Good for you," said the senator. "Mr. pilot, this paper, of a hundred
signatures, petitions this boat to put off her foreigners at Natchez
Island. If that is refused, when and where are we likely to overhaul the
_Antelope_?"
"_Antelope_? Let's see. We'd still be a-many a bend behind the
_Antelope_ at sundown but fo' one thing. At Natchez she's got to
discharge an all-fired lot o' casting an' boilers, things she can't put
ashore 'ithout han'spikes, block-an'-taickle an' all han's a-cuss'n' to
oncet. Like as not we'll catch her right there."
"Good again; sundown!" said the senator. "Now, commodore, this petition
begs----"
The commodore tried to wave him to Hugh but the senator's big hand
gently prevented. "It begs," he went on, "and every friend of Gideon
Hayle and John Courteney on this boat insists, that Madame Hayle be
required to leave this suicidal work she's doing and with her daughter
and youngest son be put aboard the _Antelope_ to join her husband ahead
of all bad news." With his under lip pushed out he smiled into the
commodore's serene face.
Hugh spoke. "The _Votaress_ being slow?" he inquired.
"Not at all! But, my young friend, the _Votaress_ can't hold funerals
and outrun the _Antelope_ at the same time."
The commodore had turned to Watson: "Want to see me?" The two moved a
few paces aft.
"Then it isn't," Hugh asked the senator, "that your hundred signers of
this thing are afraid madame will get the cholera?" He took the
petition's free end between thumb and finger and softly pulled. But its
holder held on.
"Why, yes," said the holder-on, "we fear that, too. Good Lord, she may
have the contagion now!" It gave him grim amusement to note that the
grandson's face was as quiet as the old man's, yet as hard and heavy as
any of the _Antelope's_ big castings. He thought how much better it were
to have this chap for an adherent than opponent.
"Yet you're all willing," slowly pressed Hugh, while--with their pull on
the paper increasing--they here and the commodore and Watson yonder
returned the bow of the bishop as he came from below and passed on up to
the sick-room--"you're willing to send the cholera aboard the
_Antelope_?"
"Willing, my God, no, sir! compelled!--to risk it--for the sake of
Gideon Hayle and his people and of you and yours, in a great public
interest centring in you and them." The speaker smilingly tapped the
hard-pulled document so lately urged upon the grandfather. "We couldn't
_write_ that--in this paper. When I've explained _that_ I'll hand you
_this_--don't pull it."
"Well, then, let go of it," said Hugh, with a light jerk which put it
wholly into his possession.
The senator's eyes blazed, but when he saw that Hugh's, though as much
too wide as his own, looked out of a face as set and hard as ever, he
recovered his suavity, puffed his cigar, waved it abroad, and said:
"That's all right. Take that to the captain at once, will you?"
"No," replied Hugh, the wrestler's nimble art being as far, far away
from him as the "happy land" of the children's hymn, which the cornet
was essaying below.
"No?" questioned the tolerant senator.
"No." Small knots of passengers, the squire in one, the general in
another, had drawn within eavesdropping range and Hugh lowered his
voice. "Not till I hear what you couldn't write," he said. "When you've
explained _that_ I'll hand him _this_. No one's in his room, come
there."
As they reached its door and the senator passed in, Hugh was joined by
the grandfather and Watson and detained some moments in private council,
with Watson as chief speaker. Then the commodore returned leisurely
forward toward the captain's chair while Watson sought the texas roof
and pilot-house, and Hugh shut himself in with the senator.
They sat with the writing-table between them. "I wish," said the
senator, "I had a son like you. I'd say: 'My son, the worst notion in
this land to-day is that always the first thing to do is fight, and that
the only thing to fight with is hot shot. Don't you believe it! Don't
think every man's your enemy the moment he differs with you. He may be
your best friend. And don't think every enemy wants to stab you in the
back.' But, Lord! I needn't offer a father's advice to you, with such a
father--and grandfather--as you've got.
"Now, here we are. It's idle for me to tell you what we wanted to put in
that paper and couldn't, if you can't believe that maybe, after all, I'm
a peacemaker and your friend, hunh? I don't set up to be your only
friend or only your friend or your friend only for your sake. Frankly,
my ruling passion is for the community as a whole; the old Jacksonian
passion for the people, sir. If I'm meddling it's because I see a
situation that right on its surface threatens one misfortune, and at
bottom another and bigger one, to them, the people--a public misfortune.
I don't want to avert just the cholera, here to-day, gone to-morrow; I
want to avert the lasting public misfortune of a Courteney-Hayle feud.
There, sir! That's my hand! Cards right down on the table! Oh, I'm
nothing if not outspoken, flat-footed! A lot of those signers don't see
that bottom meaning. They don't need to. But, sir, _you_ know--your
grandfather's always known--that by every instinct the Hayles, even to
the sons-in-law, are fighters. They don't know any way to succeed, in
anything, but to fight. It's the Old Hickory in them. Old Hickory always
fought, your Harry of the West has always compromised. The Hayles loathe
tact. They don't know the power of concession as you Courteneys do. And
that's why your only way to succeed with them is to _con_cede something.
Not everything, not principle--good Lord, not principle! yet something
definite, visible, conciliatory, hunh?
"Mind you, I hold no brief for them. I know those twins haven't behaved
right a minute. But no Hayle's been let into this affair, from first to
last."
The falsehood was so rash a slip that its author paused, but when Hugh's
face showed no change he resumed: "Sir, it is in your interest we ask
you to put those foreigners off. If you don't you'll rouse public
resentment up and down this river a hundred miles wide for a thousand
miles. And if, keeping them aboard, you don't put Madam Hayle and her
daughter on some other boat, and anything happens to them on this one,
you'll have Gideon Hayle and his sons--and his sons-in-law--for your
mortal enemies the rest of your lives, long or short--and with public
sympathy all on their side. Oh, I'm nothing if not outspoken! Why, my
dear boy, if you don't think I'm telling you this in friendship----"
"Call it so. But stop it, at once."
"Why--you say that--to me?"
"I do. Stop it, at once, or we'll call it----"
"Ridiculous! What will you call it, sir?"
"Mutiny. The captain has so ordered--and arranged."
The inquirer drew breath, leaned forward on an elbow, and stared. The
stare was returned. The senator began to smile. Hugh did not. The smile
grew. Hugh's gaze was fixed. The smiler smiled yet more, but in vain.
Abruptly he ha-haed.
"We'll call it that till you prove it's not," said Hugh.
"Did you ever hear of a poker face?" asked the senator.
"No, sir."
"You've got one, now; youngest I ever saw. I wish I had it--haw, haw!
Where'd you find it? I doubt if ever in your life you've had any real
contact with any real guile."
"I have," said Hugh, very quiet, very angry, yet with a joy of
disclosure, communicative at last by sheer stress of so much kept
unsaid. "And I've never got over it."
"Well, well! When was that?"
"All through the most important ten years of my life."
"Of your life! Good gracious! Which were they?"
"The first ten. A guile seemingly so guileless that yours, compared with
it, is botch work."
The two were still looking into each other's eyes when the latch clicked
and John Courteney stepped in.
XXV
"PLEASE ASSEMBLE"
Out from behind Fritz Island the _Votaress_ swept northward into a
deluge of light from a sun just finishing the first half of his
afternoon decline.
Before her lay, far and wide, an expanse of river and shore so fair,
without a noticeable sign of man's touch, that one traveller of
exceptional moral daring--conversing with the Gilmores and
Ramsey--personified the scene as "Nature in siesta." At the steamer's
approach the picture--or, as the daring traveller might have insisted,
the basking sleeper--seemed to awaken and in a repletion of smiling
content to stir and stretch and every here and there to darken and
lighten by turns as though closing and opening upon the intruder a
multitude of eyes as unnumbered as those of a human sort that looked on
the scene, the sleeper, from the beautiful boat.
So for several minutes. Then the _Votaress_ curved into the west till
the great twin shadows of her chimneys crept athwart the pilot-house and
texas, while more than one passenger of the kind who tell all they know
to whoever will hear said that yonder bright mass of cottonwoods and
willows, bathing in sunlight directly up the stream, with open water
shimmering all round it, was Glasscock Island; that Glasscock Towhead
lay hidden behind it just above, and that a towhead was an island in the
making. The whole view was such a stimulus to the outpouring of
sentiment as well as of information, that one young pair, each
succeeding flutter of whose heart-strings was more tenderly entangling
them, agreed in undertone that the river's incessant bendings were steps
of a Jacob's ladder with these resplendent white steamers for ascending
and descending angels.
"Yonder comes another now," said both at once. They pressed forward to
the foremost boiler-deck guards, among the many sitters and standers who
were trying to determine, by the ornamental form of the stranger's
chimney-tops or the peculiar note of her scape-pipes, before her name
might show out on paddle-box or pilot-house, whether she was the
_Chancellor_, the _Aleck Scott_, the _Belle Key_, or the _Magnolia_. To
be either was to be famous. The next moment she swept into view on the
island's sunward side, as pre-eminent in all the scene as though the sun
were gone and she were the rising moon. The moon was not her equal in
the eyes of those beholders. On every deck, from forecastle to after
hurricane roof, there were big spots of vivid color, red, green, blue,
never seen in the moon and which were quickly made out to be a
high-piled freight of ploughs, harrows, horse-mills, carts, and wagons
destined for the ever-widening Southern fields of corn and cotton, sugar
and rice. The passenger with the pocket spy-glass--there is always
one--proclaimed that her boiler deck was hung full--as no deck of the
moon ever is--of the finest spoils of the hunt: geese, swan, venison,
and bear; while the nakedest eye could see at a glance that from forward
gangway to sternmost guard her bull railings were up, and a closer
scrutiny revealed that the main load of her freight deck was every
farm-bred sort of living four-footed beast: horses, mules, beeves, cows,
swine, and sheep. She did not pass near though unaware of the distress
she avoided; but in courtly exaggeration she sent across the intervening
mile a double salute, white plumes of sunlit steam from her whistle--the
new mode--and the gentler voice of her bell, the older form. The course
of the _Votaress_ lay on the island's eastern side, and the hail and
response of the two crafts had hardly ceased to echo from the various
shores, or hats to wave and handkerchiefs to flutter, when the flood
between them began to widen, a thousand feet to the half minute, and
they parted.
At the same time, from the middle of the boiler deck floated a sound
ordinarily most welcome but at this time a distasteful surprise: the
dinner-bell again. Not with festal din, however, it called, but with
each solitary note drawn out through a full second or more,
church-steeple fashion, and with a silken veil tied on its tongue to
give each stroke a solemn softness and illusion of distance. Small
wonder that the most of the company, just risen from "a plumb bait,"
turned that way and stared, seeing old Joy, with joyless face, tolling
out the notes in persistent monotone while in front of her stood the
Gilmores at either side of a chair, and on the chair, also standing, the
daughter of Gideon Hayle. With her hands and eyes fastened upon a
written notice and with the bell tolling steadily at her back she
tremblingly read aloud:
"Fellow travellers: Please assemble at once in the ladies' cabin to
supplicate the divine mercy for a stay of the scourge on this boat, and
in concerted worship to seek spiritual preparation for whatever awaits
us in the further hours of our voyage. In the absence of Bishop
So-and-So, who is ministering to the sick, and at his request, the
meeting will be conducted by the celebrated comedians Mr. and Mrs.
Gilmore, late of Placide's Varieties, New Orleans."
The art of advertising being then in its swaddling-bands, this specimen
of it struck its hearers as really creditable. While it was being read
two or three men rose, and one, uncommonly shaggy and of towering
height, could hardly wait for the last word before he responded with the
voice of a hound on the trail: "By the Lord Harry, sis', amen! says I,
that's jest my size! I'm a Babtis' exhorteh an' I know the theâtre
air the mouth o' hell, but ef you play-acto's good enough to run a
prah-meet'n, I'm bad enough to go to it. Come on, gentle_men_, the whole
k'boodle of us, come on."
Some brightly, some darkly, a good halfdozen followed him into the
cabin; but the most remained seated, staring at Ramsey from head to foot
and back again, some brightly, some darkly, while the bell persevered
behind her. She sunk to her knees in the chair. Gilmore addressed that
half of the company on his side of her: "Please assemble at once, will
you, all, in the ladies' cabin."
And his wife, on her side, repeated: "Will you all please assemble at
once in the ladies' cabin."
A few more rose, but still the many, brightly or darkly, only stared on,
the bell persisting. The kneeling Ramsey again began to read:
"Fellow travellers: Please assemble at once in the ladies' cabin to
supplicate the divine mercy for a stay of the scourge on this boat, and
in concerted worship----"
"Oh, well!" some one laughingly broke in, "if that's your game--" and
the whole company, in good-natured surrender, arose and went in. But the
"bell-ringers," as they were promptly nicknamed, passed on to further
conquests.
When at length they turned to join the assemblage the four had doubled
their number. With Ramsey was the commodore. With the actor was Watson.
With Mrs. Gilmore came old Joy, and, strange to tell, due to some magic
in the tact of the senior Courteneys, the senator, no longer making
botch work of his guile, walked with Hugh, displaying a good-natured
loquacity which he was glad to have every one notice and from which he
ceased reluctantly as they parted, finding no place to sit together. The
player and his wife, over-looking the throng, complacently discovered
standing-room only, and the meeting which Hayle's daughter had pledged
herself and them to "run" was running itself. For hardly had they
entered the saloon when, from a front seat and without warning, the
exhorter exploded the stalwart old hymn-tune of "Kentucky," and soon all
but a scant dozen of the company followed in full cry, though hardly
with the fulness of the leader's voice, that rolled through the cabin
like tropical thunder:
"'Whedn I cadn read my ti-tle cle-ah
Toe madn-shudns idn the-e ske-ies
I'll bid fah-wedl toe ev'-rye fe-ah
Adn wipe my weep-ign eyes.'"
From the chairman's seat the actor kept a corner of one eye on Ramsey
and as the hymn's last line rolled away he stood up. She had not sung,
but neither had she laughed. No one could have seen the moment's huge
grotesqueness larger, yet to the relief of many she had kept her poise.
In her mind was the bishop, overhead in the texas, consciously
imperilling his life to save her brother's soul, and in the face of all
drolleries she strenuously kept her ardor centred on the gravest
significancies of the hour, as if the bishop's success up there hung on
the efficiency with which this work of his earlier appointment should be
done, down here, in his absence. She saw in the exhorter a tragic as
well as comic problem. Nor was he her only perplexity. Another, she
feared, might easily arise through some clash of any two kinds of
worshippers each devoted to its own set forms. Certain main features,
she knew, had been carefully prearranged, yet as the actor stood silent
about to ask the Vicksburger to lead in prayer she tingled with all the
exhilaration a ruder soul might have felt in hunting ferocious game or
in fighting fire. Her soul rose a-tiptoe for the moment when the
Presbyterians, who also had not sung, should stand up to pray, while the
few Episcopalians, kneeling forward, and the many Baptists and
Methodists, kneeling to the rear, should find themselves face to
face--nose to nose, anxiously thought Ramsey--with only the open backs
of the chairs between. She was herself the last to kneel, kneeling
forward but doubting if she ought not to face the other way, hardly
knowing whether she was a Catholic or a Methodist; and she was much the
last to close her eyes. But the various postures were taken without a
jar and the modest Vicksburger prayed. His words were neither impromptu
nor printed, but, as every one quickly perceived and Ramsey had known
beforehand, were memorized and were fresh from the pen of the actor.
Diffidence warped the first phrase or two, but soon each word came
clear, warm from the heart, and reaching all hearts, however borne back
by the rapturous yells with which the exhorter broke in at every pause.
"And though to our own sight," pleaded the supplicant, "we are but atoms
in thy boundless creation, we yet believe that prayer offered thee in
love, humility, and trust cannot offend. Wherefore in this extremity of
grief and disaster we implore thee for deliverance."
Close at Ramsey's back, in the only seat whose occupant her diligent eye
had failed to light on, a kneeler heaved a sigh so piteous that it
startled her like an alarum.
But the prayer went on: "Drive from us, O Lord, this pestilence. Allow
it no more toll of life or agony. Have mercy on us all, both the sick
and the sound."
"Have mercy," moaned the suffering voice behind, and Ramsey, suffering
with it, wished she had been Methodist enough to kneel with her face
that way.
"Spare not our earthly lives alone," continued the supplicant, "but save
our immortal souls. Pardon in us every error of the present moment and
of all our past. Forgive us every fault of character inherited or
acquired."
"God, forgive!" sighed the voice behind, in so keen a contrition that
Ramsey, while the supplication in front pressed on, found herself in
tears of her own penitence. The mourner at her back began responsively
to repeat each word of the prayer as it came and presently Ramsey was
doing likewise, striving the while, with all her powers, to determine
whose might be the voice which distress so evidently disguised even from
its owner.
"Enable us, our Maker," she pleaded in time with the voice behind, that
followed the voice in front, "henceforth to grow in thy likeness, and in
thy strength to devote ourselves joyfully to the true and diligent
service of the world wherein thou hast set us. Grant us, moreover, we
pray, such faith in thee and to thee that in every peril or woe, to-day,
to-morrow, or in years to come, we may without doubt or fear commit all
we have, are, and hope for, temporal or immortal, alike unto thee. And,
finally, we beg thee to grant us in this immediate issue a courage for
ourselves and compassion for all others which, come what may, living or
dying, will gird us so to acquit ourselves that in the end we may stand
before thee unashamed and by thy mercy and thy love be welcomed into
thine own eternal joy."
"Amen!" cried the exhorter and burst anew into song:
"'Chidl-dredn of the-e heabm-lye kiggn,
As we jour-nye sweet-lye siggn.
Siggn----'"