D'dy'ever hear the answer? They tell the yarn on lots o' loons but I 'uz
the real one 'n' I got the answer f'm Gid Hayle aboard the old
_Admiral_."
The names caught Ramsey's ear and drew her gaze. "That _Admiral_,"
continued the mate, "could eat wood like a harrikin. Says Hayle to me:
'Well, that depends on yo' boat 'n' yo' wood. With the right boat 'n'
the right wood--oak, ash, hickory--y'ought to burn f'm sixty to sevemty
cord' a day. But ef yo' feed'n' this boat cottonwood, why, yo' simply
shovellin' shavin's into hell.'"
Ramsey looked sad. Weary of contrasts unflattering to her men-folks, she
glanced from the refined actor to the elegant old commodore, blushed to
the player's wife and accepted her embracing arm. "Yass," pursued the
mate, "s'e jest so: 'Yo' simply shovellin' shavin's----'"
It was not Hugh's motion that cut him short but Ramsey's voice as with a
flash she said: "Go on. I don't care! If pop-a said it it's so!"
A raindrop wet her cheek. From the pilot-house Ned, as he pulled the
wheel over to chase the hardpressed _Antelope_ westward into Bunch's
Cut-off, warningly drawled that they were about to run into a shower. At
his side Watson's cub was letting down the storm board. A blue-black
cloud overhanging the green head of the cut-off had suddenly widened
across all that quarter and turned leaden gray. A writhing wind struck
the boat fairly in front. The waters ruffled, flattened, and seemed to
run faster. On an island close abeam thousands of young cottonwoods, a
mantle of unbroken verdure, bent low, paled, reeled, darkened, and
whipped. Dead ahead, a flash of lightning dropped from zenith to
sky-line, stood blindingly quivering, and scarcely had vanished when the
thunder cracked to split the ear.
"Scoot, ladies," said the mate, "or in three shakes you'll be as wet as
the river!" A single glance up the stream--though Ramsey must needs take
a double one--showed the rain coming, so near and so dense that not a
sign of the _Antelope_ was visible. The company fled, some to a larboard
stair, some to a starboard. Hugh and Ramsey suddenly missed the
Gilmores, the Gilmores missed them, each pair turned to find the other,
the lashing rain leaped down upon them as if they were all it had come
for, and with words lost in a second thunder-clap the mate threw open
the captain's room, pressed them in, and began to dry them with a
whisk-broom. The captain, he said, was below. "Off watch didn't mean off
watch to John Courteney."
"Nor to Gideon Hayle," prompted Ramsey, and while he ha-haed a cordial
assent she asked: "Whereabouts below is he--Captain Courteney?" But the
mate had turned away and she asked Hugh: "Where's your father? What's he
doing?" Her thought was still on the unmentionable new case.
"I'll tell you," said Hugh in the low voice she liked so well. "Will you
look at the river with me?"
He felt her responsive nod and smile even after they had moved to the
front window farthest from their three seniors and stood gazing out into
the beautiful tempest. Both wind and downpour had somewhat slackened
their fury. A bit nearer than before and more to starboard they could
faintly make out the _Antelope_, so white that it seemed as if she had
gone down and her ghost come up wrapped and whipped in sheets of rain.
"You don't ask me about your mother," said Hugh.
XXXVI
CAPTAIN'S ROOM
"Ah!--when you've been all this time with us!"
"No, once I was away, a good while."
"That's so! And while you was away--were away--" In lively undertone
Ramsey ran on to tell of Mrs. Gilmore's having in Hugh's absence called
in her maid Harriet to show the young lady from Napoleon how to do a bit
of stage business without a hint of the stage. At the tale's end the
pair glanced round from the nearing _Antelope_ to the Gilmores and back
again. "Harriet's talented. You wouldn't think she could be talented.
And isn't she handsome!"
"I've yet to see her face," said Hugh abstractedly.
"That's so, too! When she heard you coming back that time, she ran like
a kildee." The narrator checked a laugh. "How's mom-a? Oh, she's well or
you'd have told me. I just can't imagine mom-a any way but well." But
again the tone betrayed incertitude.
"Yes, she's well," said the youth. "So is my father."
"Where is he?"
Hugh's queer solemnity deepened. "He's down in a stateroom with your
brothers. The senator and the general have just joined them."
What a freshet of grave information! Ramsey laughed straight at him.
"You talk like a trance medium."
"Not at all."
"You do! I heard one once. You're in a trance now."
"Not at all."
"You are! Y'always are." When Hugh laughed, her laugh redoubled. The
mate and the players, though busy talking, took time to smile; the mate
winked an eye. Suddenly Ramsey sobered. "Is Basile in hot water again?
Tell me quick."
"Tell me first," said Hugh, "why his two brothers----"
"Are so wild? Because pop-a won't allow mom-a to hold them in. Pop-a
says: 'Oh, let 'em sow their wild oats early, like me; so deep they'll
never come up.' Oh, my! they're up now."
"I wasn't going to ask that."
"Well, I can't tell if you don't ask."
"Why do they keep themselves so apart from you?"
"Me? Oh, they just can't stand me!--nor even mom-a."
"That's bad, for all of us."
"All of--who? Oh!... Humph!... Oh, but it's worse for Basile! He goes
with them till he's sick of 'em, then tries mom-a and me till he's just
as sick of--of me--and himself--and then strays off to whoever he can
pick up with!"
"This time," said Hugh, "he's been picked up."
"Oh, _now_ what's happened?"
"He sickened of those boys and girls he was selling tickets with and to
drown yesterday's recollections he took a hand at cards with two
strangers."
Ramsey caught her breath but then laughed joyously. "He couldn't! He had
no money!"
"Except from his sale of tickets."
"Oh!" Her tears started. "Oh, where was mammy Joy?"
"Nursing the sick."
"The new--?" She barely escaped breaking her word. "Oh," she moaned, "he
didn't use _that_ money?"
"He lost it. He was wild to play on and recover it, and his brothers
were as eager to have him do it."
"Why, _they_ couldn't help him. They tried, yesterday, to borrow from
mom-a.... Wait." The last word came softly. The Gilmores and the mate
drew near to see the _Antelope_ overtaken. There she loomed, out on the
starboard bow, shrouded in the swirling rain. How unlike the earlier
passing, down below Natchez! No touching of guards, no hail by sign or
sound. "Like ladies under two umbrell's!" laughed Ramsey to the actor's
wife.
Now squarely abreast, stem and stem, wheel and wheel, the two crafts
seemed to stand motionless with the tempest rushing aft between them.
Then fathom after fathom the _Antelope_ fell behind, the mate and the
Gilmores moved away, Ramsey softly bade Hugh "go on," and his first
utterance drew her liveliest look.
"There's another thing makes your brothers wild," he said, "which
they're not to blame for."
"What's that?"
"Our starving plantation life," said Hugh, speaking low.
"Why, they call it the only life for a gentleman!"
"That's because they're so starved, so marooned."
"It's so tasteless without high seasoning, Basile says," said Ramsey.
She meditated. "Basile loves to eat."
Said Hugh, "It's a life I don't want you to live," and for an age of
seconds they looked into each other's eyes.
Then Ramsey--not drooping a lash--"I love the river."
"For keeps?"
She nodded, and still they looked. At length said Hugh:
"I tried hard to make friends with the twins, but----"
"They wouldn't. I know. Mr. Watson told Mrs. Gilmore."
"Yet a while ago, on the strength of it, they sent for me, to ask me to
ask my father to indorse their note."
Ramsey gasped: "You declined, of course?"
"Yes, but I told those other two passengers if they cast another card
with any of your brothers they'd go ashore, themselves, as quick as the
boat could land."
Ramsey turned and gazed out on the subsiding storm. "Why are the senator
and the general down there?"
"For quite another matter."
"Weapons. I know. Mr. Watson told Mrs. Gilmore. I thought that was
settled."
"It is."
"Then why is your father there?"
"To get the twins away from the senator and the general, and their
brother away from them and back to his----"
"Sister!" softly laughed Ramsey. "Oh, not to mom-a! just to me! I'll
go--" She started, but Hugh said:
"To you, yes, when my father has put him in a way to cover his loss
without telling your mother."
Their eyes met again. Hers were bright and wet with accusal. "Is that
_your_ proposition?"
"Yes, and my father's too."
She whipped round and gazed out again over the tawny waters. To gaze out
beside her he came so near that they almost touched. The shores were
once more a clear picture, greener than ever and unvexed by the wind.
The rain was slight and fine. The boat was swinging northward toward a
small blue rift in the gray. At the room's farther door the mate was
leaving the Gilmores for the forecastle.
Without a stir she asked: "Why don't _you_ bring Basile?"
"I must stay with our friends here."
The surprised girl glanced across at the players.
Side by side they also were gazing out and speaking low. "I'd like to
know why with them."
"And I must tell you."
She faintly tossed, gazing out again: "Why 'must'?"
"Because to you I _can_--tell things."
"Haven't you told your father yet--about--Phyllis? Humph!--had to
practise on me first."
"Yes. But there's a better reason--for everything I've ever told you."
She slowly faced him, and he added: "I want your help."
"For what? Not the Gilmores?"
"Yes, for them too now. They're in real danger."
"Fr'--from what? Not--not from--my brothers?"
"The twins, yes, and the general, John the Baptist, and a dozen more.
They've guessed it out that the Gilmores----"
"Are--So have I! A, b, ab----"
Hugh was mute. She glanced round at the players' backs and then again at
him, asking with soft abruptness:
"Where's the bishop? With mom-a yet?"
Hugh kept silence. "No, you know he's not," she answered for him. In her
steady eyes he could see, growing every moment, a new sense of the
fearful plight of things and of her relation to them. Her young bosom
rose and fell, and when her lips parted to speak again their corners
twitched. "He--he's the new case! I will mention it! I've a good right.
Why shouldn't I?"
"Only that he didn't want you to know. He wanted you--us--all, without
knowing, to go right on with the programme. We must. Even now you will,
won't you?"
She could only nod. Just then Mrs. Gilmore's maid, in a long burnoose,
with umbrellas and wraps, rose into sight close below, on a stair from
the passenger-guards, spread one of her umbrellas and looked eagerly
about for her mistress. One glance went up to Ramsey, who beckoned
through the glass, but the maid gave no sign of seeing her. The slight
rain had momentarily freshened, and she was so muffled to the eyes in
the light veil which was always on her head or shoulders in pretty
Spanish fashion that when she started forward round the skylights for
the other side of the roof Ramsey laughed to Hugh:
"Why, I know it's Harriet by her veil, don't you?"
"I know only the veil. I saw it come aboard."
"The veil of mystery!" she playfully murmured, began to hum a tune and
bit her lip on noticing that it was "Gideon's Band." "Don't you think I
might omit that to-night?"
"No, it's the best thing you do."
"Humph!--mighty poor reason--Aha! I knew it was Harriet."
The Gilmores were beckoning out their window. The actor opened the door
on that side and the maid came warily in. Briefly and in hurried apology
under her breath while dealing out her burdens she told of the
impatience of those below to resume the rehearsal and of their having
driven her to this errand the moment they could. Mrs. Gilmore handed
Hugh a shawl for Ramsey and an umbrella for himself, her husband laid a
mantle on her shoulders, and the maid reopened the door he had shut; but
Hugh called from the one opposite that it was the better way and the
players started for it. The younger pair gave them precedence, a breeze
swept through, the maid reshut her door, Hugh, holding his, bade her
follow her mistress, she sprang to obey and the "veil of mystery," which
caught in the closed door, was stripped from her like a sail from a
wreck.
[Illustration: "Stop!... Stop! the safest place for you on this boat now
is right where you are standing--Phyllis"]
Instantly she crouched and with the swiftness of a wild creature flashed
round and snatched open the door by which she had entered; but a form
pressed between her and the opening and when she threw up her face she
was looking close into the astounded eyes of Hugh Courteney. Her frame
recoiled but not her eyes; his own held them. Without turning he shut
the door at his back as Ramsey closed the one opposite, and still
holding the maid servant's gaze, he followed her slow retreat, and in
that droll depth of voice which earlier had been Ramsey's keenest
amusement said to the eyes so near his own:
"Stop!... Stop! the safest place for you on this boat now is right where
you are standing--Phyllis."
XXXVII
BASILE USES A CANE
There was a gorgeous sunset that day. Many were on the uppermost decks
to see or show it, amid a lively social confusion dull to Hugh but
delightful to Ramsey. In fact, Hugh had begun to want her and the
hurricane-deck to himself.
The actor and his wife were there. And there, indifferent to sunsets but
as hungry as ever for company, was Basile. Dinner, at midday, had
dissolved the group which the twins had for a time held together. The
captain had squared Basile with the ticket treasurer and by some
adroitness of Ramsey and Mrs. Gilmore the restless boy had been won from
his brothers and given a hand at euchre with the actor, the senator, and
a picturesque Kentuckian, late of California, "back East" by way of the
Isthmus and about to return by the Plains.
Another of this hurricane-roof assemblage was a young gentleman whom
Ramsey told Basile it was not a bit nice to speak of as Watson's cub.
And there were all the amateur players, eager for the evening's
performance; and there, too, the senator, the general, John the Baptist,
and others with whom Ramsey had not made better acquaintance only for
lack of moments! One of these was the Californian. Think of it! A man
whose shirt-pin was a gold nugget of his own digging, yet a man so
modest as to play euchre with Basile, and who stood thus far utterly
uncatechised save by John the Baptist. Oh, time, time! A history of this
voyage must and should be written with large room given to these last
ten hours: "Chronicles of a Busy Life," by "A Young Lady of Natchez."
Captain Courteney stood near the bell. Watson was up at the wheel. His
cub--whose attentions to Basile, like the Californian's, only Ramsey
could not fathom--told her this was the second dog-watch. He was telling
her everything he knew. She was asking him everything he knew not.
Indeed, among all there was great giving and getting of information on
matters alow and aloft. There was, too, frequent praise of the
commodore, the doctor, the priest, the sisters of charity, Madame
Hayle--all those heroic ones on the immigrant deck, where the pestilence
was making awful headway. But there was so perfect a silence as to the
bishop that it was manifest that every one knew about him but was too
discreet to tell.
Matters beyond the boat, too, far and near, were much discussed, though
some actually saw the sunset they were all there to see. Nowhere within
five hundred miles the compass round, the actor said, was there a town
of ten thousand souls, if of five thousand. Nowhere within a hundred
miles was there a town population of five hundred. Since the morning
thundershower the _Votaress_ had come ninety miles, yet the great Yazoo
Delta was still ahead, abeam, astern, on the river's Mississippi side.
Some one told two or three, who told four or five, it was a hundred and
seventy-five miles long by an average of sixty wide, and covered seven
thousand square miles. From zenith to farthest east the clouds that
overhung it were pink and ashes-of-roses in a sea of blue. The entire
west was one splendor of crimson and saffron, scarlet and gold, with
intervals of black and green. Even the turbid river between was an
unbroken rosy glow. The vast wooded swamps over on that shore were in
Arkansas. Louisiana had been left behind in that vivid moment when
Ramsey and Hugh were making their discovery of "Harriet" and when Hugh,
we may here add, was handing back her "veil of mystery."
"When I saw you do that," Ramsey had later said to him, "I knew she was
safe--and she knew she was!" The laughing girl's mind was brimful yet of
the amazing incident, at every pause in her talk, which was now with
this one, now with that, and often with the cub.
It was interesting to note the masterful-careless air with which
Watson's apprentice more than once endeavored to make it clear to Hugh,
concerning this daughter of Gideon, that, whereas the mud clerk, at his
desk below, was utterly love-bemired, his, the cub's, liking for her was
solely for her countless questions, of which he said that "you never
could tell where the next one would hit." No singed moth he! To prove it
he offered Hugh a very blasé query: "What do women ever do with all the
answers we men give 'em, hey?"
Hugh could not tell him. Yet to Hugh the riddle was at least as old as
his acquaintance with Ramsey. He pondered it as he and Mrs. Gilmore
conversed in undertone while gazing on the wonderful changes of the sky,
and while Ramsey, near by, visibly studied the exhorter, whom she was
cross-examining together with the actor on the lore of the river as they
had known it in the days before steam. For she had actually got those
two antipodes face to face again in a sort of truce-rampant like that of
the lion and the unicorn on the _Votaress's_ very thick plates and
massive coffee-cups. She was not like most girls, Hugh thought. While
their interrogations were generally for the entertainment, not to say
flattery, of their masculine informants, hers were the outreachings of
an eager mind free from self-concern and athirst for knowledge to be
stored, honey-like, for future use. Some women have butterfly minds,
that merely drink the social garden's nectar. Others are more like bees.
The busy bee Ramsey, Hugh felt assured, was by every instinct a honey
gatherer.
But who, at a single cast, ever netted the whole truth as to any one?
Even while he so mused--at the same time doing his best to give Mrs.
Gilmore his whole attention--Ramsey, with her back turned yet vividly
aware of him, willing--preferring--that he should hear alone from that
lady what she would later draw from him, and ardently mindful of his
word that he "wanted her help," was not merely gathering facts regarding
her beloved river but was also deep in diplomacy, endeavoring with all
her youthful arts, such as they were, to help him.
Her manoeuvres were fairly good. To her it seemed as though this
spirit of strife so electrically pervading the _Votaress_ might yet be
tranquilized through a war of wits exclusively and she was using her own
with the tactical nimbleness of the feminine mind. She knew the twins
were down on the boiler deck again, one faint, yet both pursuing, egged
on by him of the stallion's eye and him of the eagle's, and all the more
socially and dangerously active because, by strict orders to every one,
cut off from the gaming-table and the bar. She could not do a hundred
things at once--though she could do six or seven--and it was well to
grapple this one task first. Thus she kept Hugh free to confer with the
player's wife as to "Harriet."
Her husband, the wife told Hugh, had drawn "Harriet" from the water just
as Dan Hayle sank, and husband and wife had concealed her on their
flatboat, unable to resist her wild appeal not to be given back into
slavery.
"We didn't dream she'd done anything wrong; she didn't tell us that for
years. Players, Mr. Hugh, don't meddle much in politics and we'd never
thought whether we were for slavery or against it until there was the
whole awful question sprung on us in an instant."
"So you took her----?"
"For my maid, yes--on wages, of course--down to New Orleans--we were
bound there--and kept her when we went North and ever since."
"And she's always been----?"
"Well-behaved, faithful, kind, and wise. That one terrible deed, which
she says you know all about----"
"I do."
"It seemed to change the very foundations of her character, to convert
her soul."
"Yes," said Hugh, as if speaking from experience.
"Yet she kept her high spirit. She would never put on a disguise. And
really that was safest since she wasn't being looked for by any one.
'I'm no advertised runaway,' she said. Still she's never been foolhardy.
She'd never have come--we'd never have brought her--aboard this boat
could we have foreseen the mishap to her captain which decided you and
your father and grandfather to come on her."
So ran the story hurriedly, but before it had got thus far Hugh's
attention, in spite of him, was divided. It was wise, we have implied,
for Ramsey to take the exhorter while he was in a manageable humor. He
had come to the roof with an improved regard, got by his fall in the
cabin, for the "'Piscopalian play-actoh," and with brute shrewdness was
glad to make an outward show of good-will to Gilmore, and accepted with
avidity every pretty advance of Gid Hayle's "bodacious brick-top gal."
Hugh could hear him answering Ramsey's inquiries regarding various
pieces of river seen or unseen during the day.
"Spanish-moss Ben'? Why, they calls it that by reason 'at when we-all
used to come down the riveh in flatboats, that's whah we al'ays fus' see
the moss a-swingin' f'om the trees. Yass, sawt o' like scalps f'om
wigwam poles. An' that ho'pe us to know whah'bouts we 'uz at. We knowed
we 'uz at Spanish-moss Ben'. Didn' we, Mr. play-actoh?"
The actor would have said yes, but the fountain of information flowed
straight on: "Yass, same as at Islan' Ten--aw Twenty--aw any numbeh, we
knowed by count we 'uz that many islan's f'om whah the Ohio comes in. Ef
that wah the tenth islan' we'd seed then we knowed that 'uz Islan' Ten
aw whaheveh it wah, whetheh it wah a' islan' yit aw b'en j'inded on to
the main sho' sence it got its numbeh."
They were rounding Cypress Bend and Ramsey had asked another question.
"Was this where you first used to see cypress woods?"
"Thundeh, no! This gits h-its name by reason 'at they steals mo'
millions o' dollahs wuth o' cyp'ess timbeh f'om the gove'ment out'n this
ben' than any otheh on the whole Fatheh o' Watehs, es the Injins say.
You know that, Mr. play-actoh. Lawd! all the places ain't name' alike.
'Way back down yondeh whah we met the _Troubado'_ this mawnin'----"
"Oh!" moaned Ramsey, "another o' pop-a's boats!"
"Yass, whilst you-all 'uz a-temptin' Provi-_dence_ a-practisin' of a
play! Down yondeh by Islan' Ninety, Seary's Islan'--which it ain't be'n
a raal islan' these fawty year'--you 'membeh, Mr. play-actoh, that ole
san'-bah jess below it, full o' snags as my granny's mouth, which befo'
the earthquake it used to be a reg-lah death-trap fo' flatboats? Well,
_you_ know h-it didn' git its name by reason 'at anybody fo' the fust
time see thah Gen'al Hull's Lef' Leg! No; an' likewise away up yondeh
pas' the Tennessee line, at Islan' Thutty-eight, whah the current's so
full o' biles an' swells an' snags an' sawyehs 'at they calls it the
Devil's Elbow! Now, nobody ain't neveh sho' 'nough see' the devil's
identical elbow--in this life. No, suh, you'd ought to know that ef
anybody. Oh, no, Devil's Elbow, Presi-_dent's_ Islan', Paddy's Hen an'
Chickens, Devil's Race-groun', Devil's Bake-ov'm, they jess sahcaystic
names." He turned to Watson's cub, who with Basile had joined the trio,
and was watching to get in a word. "You know that."
The boy assented. "But did you see," he asked Ramsey, "the swarms of
birds down around Island Eighty-eight?"
"No!" interposed the exhorter, "she wah still atemptin' Provi-_dence_ in
like manneh as afo'said!"
Basile flashed resentment. "To put it politely," he retorted. But the
actor and Ramsey laughed.
"Oh, John the Babtis' wouldn't 'a' putt it no politer. I see' the birds.
We 'uz a meetin' the _Southe'n Cross_----"
"Anoth'--!" Ramsey began to wail.