shoulder, and then over to the standing player. A hush was on the
reseated company, and its united gaze on Ramsey and the mourner who with
her had been audibly following the prayer. Two seats from her Mrs.
Gilmore vainly tried to catch her eye. The penitent was in his seat
again. He bent low forward, his face in his hands, and face and hands
hid in his thick fair locks. Ramsey had turned toward him with a knee in
her chair, a handkerchief pressed fiercely against her lips, and her
drowned eyes gazing down on him. But as the actor was about to speak she
wheeled toward him and stood with an arm beseechingly thrown out, her
voice breaking in her throat.
XXVI
ALARM AND DISTRESS
"It's Basile!" she cried. Then, one after another, to the exhorter, to
Hugh, to each of the two Gilmores separately: "This is wrong, all wrong!
You said we mustn't alarm or distress any one--and we mustn't!" She
tried to face her chair round to the bowed head, and Hugh, at a touch
from his grandfather, moved to her aid. Mrs. Gilmore too had started but
was kept back by others, whispering with her on the edges of their
seats.
"It's all wrong," insisted Ramsey to Hugh close at hand, "and we mustn't
do it! You said we mustn't!"
The exhorter was gratified, not to say flattered. "H-it ain't none of it
wrong, my young sisteh," he called across. "Ef yo' bretheh's distress ah
the fear o' damnation it's all right and Gawd's name be pra-aised!"
"Amen!" groaned one or two of the undistressed majority, while old Joy
modestly pressed up from the rear.
"Please, good ladies an' gen'lemens," she said as she came, "will you
please fo' to lem-me thoo, ef you please? Dat's my young mahsteh, what I
done nu's' f'om a baby. Ef you please'm, will you please suh, fo' to
lem-me pass, ef you please?" In gentle haste she made her way, many eyes
following, and heads swinging right and left to see around the heads
that came between. The goal was reached just as Ramsey, in her turned
seat, leaned to lay fond hands on her brother's locks. But Hugh
interposed an arm.
"No," he said, "we mustn't do that either."
"No!" said Joy, "dat's right! Fo' de Lawd's sake tek heh clean away--ef
you kin. An' ef you please, good ladies an' gen'lemens, fo' to squeeze
back a leetle mite----?"
They squeezed the mite and she knelt by the boy. The sister knelt too,
but as she left her chair Hugh, taking it, put himself between her and
her brother. The actor was the only one left standing.
"Sing, will you, please," he said--"and will you all sing
"'There is a land of pure delight--'
Mrs. Gilmore, will you raise the tune?"
But the exhorter was too quick for them and "riz" it before the request
was fairly uttered. All sang, and over all easily soared the voice of
the zealot:
"'Thah is a ladnd o' pyo' de-light
Whah saidnts ib-maw-tudl reigdn.
Idn-fidn-ite day dis-pedls the-e night
Adn pleas-u'es badn-ish paidn.'"
Now he rolled his enraptured eyes and now his quid, spat freely on the
rich carpet, beat time on one big palm with the other and on the floor
with one vast foot, while through the song like a lifeboat through
waves, undisturbed and undisturbing, cleft the steady speech of the
nurse to the boy. Regardless of the precaution just urged for Ramsey,
her arm fell over his bowed form.
"'Thah eveh-last-ign sprign a-bi-dns
Adn nev-eh with-'rign flow-ehs--'"
--ran the hymn, and straight through it, heard everywhere, pressed mammy
Joy's tearful inquiry:
"Is you got religion, honey boy, aw is you on'y got de sickness? Tell
me, honey, which you got? Is you got bofe?"
The lad moaned, shook his head, and suddenly sat up, and cried to his
kneeling and gazing sister: "Neither! Great God, I'm not ready for
either!"--his words, like old Joy's, cutting squarely across the hymn as
it continued:
"'Death like a nor-rah streabm di-vi-dns
This heab'-mly ladnd frobm ow-ehs.'"
Ramsey stood. "Well, don't be alarmed or distressed!" she half laughed,
half wept, while the nurse crooned:
"Honey boy, ef you ain't yit got de sickness----"
"I don't know!" he cried, so loudly that only the Methodists and
Baptists sang on. He sprang up and glanced round to the judge, the
general, the squire, the senator, exclaiming: "I've been right in
it!--to get back that infernal petition of yours when I dropped it! I've
all but touched the dying and the dead! I've been handled all over by
men who'd been handling them! Whatever I've caught from them I'll know
is a judgment! For at last I've got a sense of sin! Right down under
here behind this boat's engines I got it! I want you-all people to pray
for me! I've been an awful sinner for years!"
"So have I!" wept Ramsey aloud.
"Praise de Lawd!" said Joy, from her knees.
Mrs. Gilmore drew Ramsey backward and shared a chair with her. The
exhorter and a stout few hung to the hymn--
"'Whi-dle Jur-dan ro-dled be-tweedn,'"
--and the terrified boy talked on through everything, no one edging away
from him as the wise might in these days.
"I'm not fitt'n' to die, Mr. Gilmore," he said. "That petition's not my
worst sin--by half--by quarter. But it's opened my eyes. You-all that
got it up, and you-all that signed it, it would open yours, one look
below; and I want you-all, right here, now, to tell God you take it
back, before he lays his curse on me! You can manage that somehow, Mr.
manager, can't you? Can't somebody pray it? Or--or can't--can't you vote
on it?"
"Yes," broke in Ramsey, clung to by the player's wife but standing and
glancing from the player so directly to the senator that all looked at
him, "vote! vote!"
He gave the player the sort of nod one gives an auctioneer, and the
singers stopped. "I think we can," said the actor, "and that if the
senator votes yea so will every one. All in favor of withdrawing the
petition raise the right hand. It is unanimous."
The exhorter was up. "Mr. play-actoh, that's all right. I neveh signed
that trick, nohow. So fah so good, fo' a play-acto's church--ef you kin
git sich a church into the imagination o' yo' mind! But vot'n' ain't
enough!" He pointed to Ramsey, fast in Mrs. Gilmore's arms, and to her
brother, in old Joy's. "Vot'n' don't take heh--naw him--out'n the gall
o' bittehness naw the bounds o' iniquity. Oh, my young silk-an'-satin
sisteh, don't you want us to pray fo' you?"
Ramsey's courage was tried. Many gazers, but particularly the judge's
sister, seemed, by their eyes, crouching to pounce on her whether she
answered yea or nay. "I know," she said, in tears again, and
unconsciously wringing her hands, "I know I ought to, but--but I--I'm
afraid there isn't time. For I want--oh, I--I want to vote again! I want
to vote to take up a collection, and a big one, for those people
down-stairs that mom-a's with. And then we can pray for her--and for
Captain Courteney. Mom-a's a Catholic but it's in her Bible the same as
in any: 'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.'" The
last word was but a breath on her quivering lip. Facing the actor she
stood and waited. Joy was getting Basile away.
"It is moved by the last speaker," said the player, "and seconded
by"--he glanced inquiringly about--"by several--that we make an
immediate contribution for the benefit of our deck passengers, who are
in dire need, and that----"
"That we make it a big one!" repeated Ramsey.
"All in favor--" he said. "Unanimous. I will ask Mr. Courteney and Miss
Hayle to take up the collection."
* * * * *
The dispersal of the meeting found the lady of Milliken's Bend with the
judge's sister. The judge, joining them, reported that the laughing
Ramsey's collection was double that of the solemn Hugh. The sister's
eyes snapped as she put in: "She made me double my contribution." Ramsey
passed at a distance. "It's a shame to keep short dresses on a girl of
that age and of her--her----"
"Spontaneity?" asked the judge. "I like spontaneity, even exuberance, at
times."
"Well, I don't," said the sister.
"No," murmured the judge. These two, who were to get off at Natchez,
were just beginning to be enjoyed--as types. The sister was one who had
all her life complained of "enlargement of the spleen" and even oftener
of a "bitter mouth." On which the judge's only comment was: "Hmm!" Just
now, as to Ramsey, he grew daring.
"Her dress," he said, "is longer than it was yesterday."
"It's a mile too short."
"As much as that?"
"I wish you were not going to leave us so soon," said the lady of the
Bends, and then bravely added, of Ramsey: "Her dresses are short by her
own choice, old Joy says."
"Shouldn't doubt it a moment."
"Yes, she keeps them short to keep her mother young. I think that's
right sweet of her, don't you?"
"No," replied the sister, and went to lock her trunks.
XXVII
PILOTS' EYES
Once more the hurricane deck. What space! What freedom! Again from the
airy, sun-beaten roof, that felt as thin underfoot as the levelled wing
of an eagle, the eye dropped far below to where the tawny waters glided
to meet the cleaving prow or foamed away from the smiting wheels. Again
the dazzled vision rose into the infinite blue beyond clouds and sun, or
rested on the green fringes of half-drowned shores forever passing in
slow recessional.
Four in the afternoon. Esperance Point rounded and left astern in the
east. Ellis Cliffs there too, whitening back to the western sun. Saint
Catherine's Bend next ahead, gleaming a mile and a quarter wide where it
swung down from the north. And the _Votaress_ herself! Once again that
perfect grace in the faint up-curve, at stem and stern, of the low white
rail that rimmed the deck. Again, above the stained-glass skylights of
the cabin, the long white texas, repeating the deck's and cabin's lines
in what Ramsey called a "higher octave," its narrow doors overhung with
gay scrollwork, and above its own roof, like a coronet, the pilot house,
with Watson just returned to the wheel. Once more the colossal,
hot-breathing twin chimneys, their slender iron braces holding them so
uprightly together and apart, the golden globe--emblem of the Courteney
fleet--hanging between them, and their far-stretched iron guys softly
harping to one another in the breeze. All these again, and away out
beyond the front rail, with a hundred feet depth of empty air between,
the jack-staff, high as a pine and as slim for its height as a cane from
the brake, its halyards whipping cheerily, the black night-hawk at its
middle, a golden arrow at its peak.
John Courteney, coming up into this scene, laid a hand on his solitary
chair at the forward rail but then paused. Between the chair and the
skylights behind it stood the squire's sister and brother-in-law and
Ramsey. Yes, they eagerly agreed with him, the view ahead was certainly
dazzling. Ramsey would have asked a question, but the husband remembered
the contagion from whose field below the captain had just come, the wife
noticed that the presence of ladies would keep the captain standing, and
the three, remarking that such a scene was too brilliant to confront,
moved aft. As they went, Watson, up at the wheel, and Ned, his partner,
lingering by him, had a half-length view of them, their lower half being
hid by the cabin roof, close under whose edge their feet passed, where
its shadow kept the deck cool. The wife still had her embroidery, the
husband his De Bow. By certain changes about Ramsey's throat and
shoulders Ned noticed that she was in yet another dress, whose
skirt--such part as showed above the cabin roof--was in flounces almost
to the waist. He would tell that at home to his wife and daughter, who
now and then depended on him for fashions, with striking results.
Watson, too, noticed Ramsey, yet his chief attention remained, as
steadily as his gaze, on his steering-mark far up in the bight of the
sunlit bend, at the same time including, here below, his seated
commander.
"Cap' ought to be pootty tol'able tired, Ned."
"Well, now, he jest ought!" The partner dropped back and perched on the
visitor's bench, whence he could still see the river though not the
closely intervening cabin--and texas roofs; and all the two said later
was without an exchange of glances. Watson thought the captain would
"rest more now, on watch, than what he did before, off," having got
matters running so much smoother down below; though the cholera was
"a-growin', straight along."
Ned told of his pleasure in seeing Hugh conduct the senator down to the
devotional services: "Lard, they hev done him brown, ain't they?--atween
'em, Hugh and Hayle's girl?"
"With some help," said Watson, modestly. "That petition--ef th's
anything else aboard this boat as dead as what it is"--he ran into
inelegancies.
Ned offered to bet it was not dead inside the senator, and Watson
admitted that the statesman would probably never forgive the "genteel"
way he had been euchred; though like euchre, he said, a lot of it was
luck.
"But, man! the bluff he _kin_ put up! Couldn't believe my eyes when we'd
passed the hat an' adjourned an' I see him a-standin' at the fork o' the
for'a'd stairs, ag'in the trunk room, same ole bell-wether as ever,
a-makin' a _bully_ speech to Madame Hayle an' that Marburg chap down in
the gangway, foot o' the steps, an' a-present'n' him our
'oblations'--says he--meanin' the swag!"
"An' her a-translat'n' for him!" said Ned, fancying the scene, with the
senator, under his mask, "a-gritt'n' his tushes!" and Watson, to
heighten it, told of Hugh and the actor at one head of the double stair,
and Mrs. Gilmore and Ramsey at the other--"a-chirpin' him on, an' the
whole b'iler deck, ladies and gents, takin' it in, solid!"
The senator was long-headed. "Yes, an' yit Hugh's throwed him fair jest
by main strength an' awk'ardness."
"I dunno!" said Ned. "It wuz long-headed, too, fo' Hugh an' the
play-acto's to give him the job."
"It wuz long-headed in her who put 'em up to it."
"Oh, look here! _She_ didn't do that, did she?"
"'Less'n I'm a liar," replied Watson, eyes front.
"Hunh! Wonder which! Say, Wats'; on the b'iler deck--did she have on
this gownd she's a-wearin' now?"
"No," said Watson, tardily, with eyes still up-stream.
"Not wast'n' yo' words," said the inquirer.
"No."
"A short answer turneth away wrath, I s'pose."
"It turneth away discussion o' ladies' gownds."
"Lard! I don't discuss 'em to excess. Noticed hern--its upper works--an'
a flounce or two--an' sort o' wondered as to the rest of it, how much
water it's a-drawin'. Anything li-bell-ious about that?"
"No, considerin' the source."
Ned slipped from the bench to go, but Watson looked back with a light
beckon of the head and he turned to the wheel. Thence he glanced down
over the breast-board, over the forward eaves of the texas, down to the
skylight roof and upon several persons. First, the boat's commander. He
was leaving his seat at the approach, from the head of a boiler-deck
stair, of Madame Hayle and the doctor. On the skylight roof, near the
bell, were the two players, just greeting Hugh as from the other side he
reached the deck and stepped up to their level. On the same roof, midway
between these and the front of the texas, were the squire's sister and
her husband returning from their search for shade. And lastly, close
after them, came Ramsey, a source of general astonishment. For the gown
she was in and whose lower possibilities had aroused Ned's avowed and
Watson's concealed interest was her mother's and swept the deck.
Madame Hayle grew more beautiful as with a play of indignation which
wholly failed to disguise her pleasure she cried: "By what
_per_-mission? by what _per_-mission have you pud--my--clothes?"
The girl would have flown to her arms but the doctor forbade, and for
second choice she set up a dainty tripping to and fro athwartships;
dipping, rising, skipping, swaying, bridling, like a mocking-bird on a
garden wall. It made Ned and Watson themselves worth seeing.
Professional dignity set their faces like granite though every vein
seethed with a riot of laughter. But the laughter's chief cause was not
Ramsey.
"Look at Hugh," muttered Watson, gently drawing down the wheel for the
_Votaress_ to sweep round into a northward reach at whose head Natchez
Island would presently show itself. To look at Hugh took nerve, but in a
moment----
"Look at her," said Ned.... "There! she tipped her nose at him!"
"She didn't!"
"She did. Wats', yo' game ain't never goin' to work."
"Ned, y'ain't got the sense of a loon."
"Well, I swear I've got more'n Hugh--or her."
XXVIII
WORDS AND THE "WESTWOOD"
Down on the roof, while Ramsey's mother started with the physician
around the skylights for the texas, and Hugh and Gilmore conversed with
the captain, Mrs. Gilmore, her hands on Ramsey, said to madame:
"I want her now, to begin to make ready for tomorrow evening. My
dear"--to the girl--"I've a dozen dresses that will become you better
than this one."
"Long?" cried Ramsey. "I'll take the lot!" She felt Hugh distantly
looking and listening.
"We won't trade on Sunday," laughed Mrs. Gilmore; "but you
mustn't"--scanning her approvingly--"ever put on a short dress again."
"Ho-oh, I never will!" said Ramsey, with a toss meant for Hugh, who went
by, hurrying aft to meet a newcomer. She started after him. Madame
Hayle, in that direction, had gone into the sick-room, whence Ramsey's
brother Julian, with barely a word to his mother, had come out. Stepping
down into the narrow walk between the roofs of cabin and pantry and
glancing over his shoulder upon the company about the bell, he winced at
sight of his sister's attire. Yet he kept his course and was well
started aft before he saw that he was being met by some one in the
narrow way, and by whom but Marburg. It was that alien whom Hugh was
hastening to reach and on whom Ramsey was staring. He had come up from
the engine room through the steward's department, by the unguarded route
which Basile's ascent had revealed, and now came face to face with a foe
where there was room only for friends to meet and pass. So said the eyes
of each to each, but just then a quick footfall on the cabin roof,
behind and somewhat above him, caused Julian to face round and he
confronted Hugh.
"Mr. Hayle," was Hugh's word, "what will you have, sir?"
"Nothing, sir, of you! What will _you_ have of _me_, sir?"
Ramsey glided by both and halted before the exile, whose scowl vanished
in a look so grateful and supplicating that her words, clearly meant to
justify his presence, caught in her throat: "What will you--have, sir?
My mother?--back again?--and the doctor?"
"Yes," he replied, and then added in German with an anguish of gesture
which was ample interpretation, "yes, for _my_ mother! for my little
brother! Ah, God! he is not dead! He is yet alive! His arms are as
supple as _these_. There is color still in his cheeks!"
She stood dumb with horror. Yet she woke to action as, close beside her,
she heard her brother snarl at Hugh:
"I'll go where I please! Who stops me, God pity him!"
She dropped nimbly from the skylights' overhang to the alien's level and
with looks as beseeching as his waved him back a step. Then with the
same mute entreaty she faced Julian and Hugh. But there was a ludicrous
contrast, visible to all, between Hugh's phlegm and her brother's pomp,
and by a flash of feminine instinct she divined the best mood with which
to match it. Grimly elated, Hugh saw what was coming. Julian saw, and
groaned a wearied wrath. The captain, the commodore--for the commodore
had returned--the Gilmores, the Yazoo couple, the pilots overhead, all
waited with lively and knowing gaze. She went limp, hid her face,
swayed, sank to one knee, and filled the whole width of the narrow
passage with arms and draperies, the meanwhile breaking into a laugh so
wholly soliloqual that the two players became learners. But again she
sprang erect and had hardly thrown her curls back from her blushing face
when her mother, the bishop, and the doctor stepped from the sick-room,
and madame addressed the immigrant:
"Ah, ritturn, if you ple-ease. Me, I am ritturning!"
"Yes," chimed the bishop and the doctor; "yes, at once!" and the exile,
with pleading looks to Ramsey, to the others by turn and to her again,
went below. Madame and the physician began to follow.
"How's Lucian?" called Ramsey after them.
"Getting well," replied both. They passed behind the wheel-house and
only the pilots knew that at its corner Madame Hayle stopped where she
could still see and hear. All others kept their eyes on Julian, who was
in a redder heat than ever, and on Hugh, who was addressing him in a
depth of tone that amused the Gilmores almost as keenly as it did
Ramsey, who had rejoined them at his back. Suddenly he faced around.
"If Miss Hayle," he said, "would as soon go below----"
Miss Hayle sang her reply, bugled it: "She would no-ot."
Hugh stepped down into her brother's path and faced him again: "You have
written your father a letter----"
Julian's head flew up but bent in slow avowal.
"To be put aboard the _Antelope_," pursued Hugh----
The head went higher: "Well, sir?"
"To outrun this boat."
"And--if--I--have, sir?"
"Why, yes," murmured the squire's brother-in-law and sister, to the
Gilmores, "suppose he has?"
"So have I," said Hugh to Julian. He glanced up to the Yazoo couple and
then to the bishop self-isolated near the sick-room door. Ramsey and the
couple laughed. Hugh turned her way again: "If Miss Hayle----"
"She wouldn't," said Ramsey, laughing more.
"Well, sir!" drawled the waiting Julian, to Hugh.
Hugh waved a hand toward the bishop: "That gentleman has risked his life
for your sick brother."
"Yes," said Ramsey. The bishop scowled up the river. Julian scowled at
Hugh.
"Well, sir?" he once more challenged.
"He was told he was wanted as a minister," said Hugh.
"_Well, sir?_"
"He was wanted merely to get your letter off secretly."
"You lie!"
"Oh!" sighed the Yazoo pair. Ramsey shrank upon Mrs. Gilmore.
"Not at all," said a quiet voice overhead and the eyes of Julian,
blazing upward, met Watson's blazing down.
"Come," said the player's wife to Ramsey, "come away."
"I won't," tearfully laughed Ramsey, and Mrs. Gilmore and the squire's
sister had to laugh with her.
"The lie," said Hugh, "will keep. Your letter is such that the bishop
declines to touch it."
The bishop swelled. Julian recoiled and, glancing behind him, confronted
his mother.
"My son," she began, but he whirled back to Hugh.
"You keyhole spy!" he wailed; "you eavesdropping viper!"
Ramsey came tiptoeing along the edge of the pantry roof to light down
between them but he imperiously motioned her off, still glaring at Hugh
and gnawing his lip with chagrin. "Oh, never mind!" was all he could
choke out; "never you mind!" He ceased again, to catch what Hugh was
replying to him. Said Hugh:
"I'll take your letter and send it with my own."
"No, sir! No, you grovelling sneak!"
"Mais, yass!" called Madame Hayle from her place, and Ramsey laughed
from hers, but a new voice arrested every one's attention. The bishop
wheeled round to it with an exclamation of dismay that was echoed even
by Julian. In the sick-room door stood Lucian, half dressed and feebly
clinging to the jamb.
"Let him do it, Jule!" he cried in a tremulous thin voice. "Take the
whelp at his word! Don't you see? Don't you see, Jule? We'll have him in
a nine hole. It'll be hell for him if he puts it through and worse if he
slinks it!" He tried to put off the bishop's sustaining arm.
A light of discernment filled Julian's face. There was no time to
ponder. He had always trusted Lucian for the cunninger insight and did
it now though Lucian lay in the bishop's arms limp and senseless. He
drew forth the letter. Gayly stooping over the skylights Ramsey reached
for it and passed it to Hugh. Julian sprang up to the bishop, who had
borne Lucian into the sick-room and now filled its door again, waving a
cheerful reassurance.
"A mere swoon," said the bishop; "all right again."
"It may be all right up there," the squire's sister began to say to the
actor's wife--and hushed. But Ramsey had heard, as she watched her
mother hurry below to the young Marburg brother lying as limp and
faintly pink in death as her brother up here in life; heard, and thought
of the perils in store for Hugh and his kin and her and hers unless this
sweet, wise mother could charm them away as sunlight charms away
pestilence. Mr. Gilmore called her:
"Come, we've lots to do."