the foot o' the islan' our whistle bellered howdy to her an' we riz one
solid squah mile o' wings; an' when she bellered back, a-round'n' its
head, she riz anotheh. Yit them birds wa'n't a pinch naw a patchin' to
what I hev see' thah; millions an' millions an' millions _uv_ millions
o' swan, pelikin, san'-hill crane, geese----"
"Birds of paradise?" asked Brick-top.
"They 'uz all birds o' paradise! the whole kit an' bilin'! by reason 'at
this _wah_ a paradise them days, this-yeh whole 'Azoo Delta, which you,
suh"--the speaker turned to Gilmore with reviving spleen. By opposite
stairs, larboard and starboard, the twins, each carrying a sword-cane,
as Hugh saw by the double gold band around it a finger-length from the
top, had just reached the roof, and the emboldened orator began to make
it plain that despite his "bodacious" criticism of their sister,
overheard by Julian, he had at least half righted himself with both
brothers and was on their side in whatever was now afoot.
"Which you, suh," he repeated, "hev tuck on yoseff to drap hints 'at it
ain't a civilize' country!--by reason 'at it ain't cityfied! Like Paris,
I s'pose, my Gawd!--with thah high-heel' shoes an' low-neck' dresses!"
His voice rose as the twins, Mrs. Gilmore, and Hugh came close. "Aw
Babylon with thah jeweldry!--rings on thah fingehs an' bells on thah
toes! Aw Sodom an' Gomorrah!--with thah staht-neckid statutes! Well,
thaynk the Lawd, yo're plumb right, we ain't! Thaynk Gawd we _air_ a
'new-bawn civilization'--as says you when you didn' suspicion I wah
a-listenin'"--he fell into a mincing mimicry--"'a new-bawn civilization
with all the chahm an' all the pity o' new-bawn things,' says you to yo'
wife--ef she air yo' wife."
The shock of the insult ran through the group and out to a dozen hearers
beyond; to the captain and a knot of young people courting his
conversation; to Watson, high above; to the stallion-eyed man and the
eagle-eyed, who both had come up with the twins and were adhering to the
senator, the general, and the Kentuckian from California.
Gilmore paled with anger. Ramsey's merriment, which had begun at the
beginning, ceased for a breath and then, to the loathing of the twins,
came on worse as she found herself very erect in one of Mrs. Gilmore's
gentle arms. The eyes of both the wife and the girl were on the actor
and their every nerve was unstrung. Beseechingly he waved them away.
"Come," the wife said, though without moving, "come on."
"Oh, not a step!" laughed Ramsey. "They--they need us! We must help!"
She had turned her frank gaze to Hugh in mingled wonder, exultancy, and
distress. It seemed a dream that he should be the dull boy of yesterday.
He was speaking to the exhorter and appeared not to have her in sight or
mind, although, in fact, her untimely levity ran him through like a
dart. His absurdly deep voice was rich with a note not of mere
forbearance but of veritable comradery, yet his eyes, as they held the
offender's, were as big and dangerous as she had ever seen her mighty
father's and she laughed on for what laughter might be worth, the only
help she could furnish.
"Not that you mean the slightest offence," he prompted.
The exhorter stiffened up. The nearer few packed close. Slender Basile
was just at Hugh's left between him and the twins. The exhorter opened
his mouth to reply but the words hung in his throat. To help them out he
gave his head a disputative tilt, but Basile's hysterical treble broke
in:
"Say no! You slang-whanging lick-skillet, say no!"
The man gasped. The boy whirled to his convalescent brother. "Give me
that cane!" He snatched it, whipped out its keen stiletto, and with all
his light force smote the empty staff, left-handed, across the
exhorter's cheek and ear, yelping: "Say no! Say it!"
"No!" said the victim, but the word was equivocal and the boy beside
himself. For Hugh had wrenched the staff from him and was holding the
hand that gripped the stiletto, while the lad, with streaming tears,
plunged, whined and gnashed at the backwoodsman.
"Let me go!" he begged. "I see their game! Let me kill their insulter of
ladies!"
The game was not hard to see. At a better moment than this blunderer had
chosen, some one was to provoke the actor to an assault which the twins
would make their pretext for a combined attack on that political
"suspect" and common pest, using the canes as canes until Hugh should be
drawn into the fray, when the canes would become swords, dirks, the
actor a secondary consideration, and the game--interesting. Hugh saw it
but saw it with even less sense of peril than Ramsey, who stood her
ground nervously cling-ing to her chaperon, yet flashing and tinkling
with a mirth as of some reckless sport; a mirth mildly reflected by her
companion and which, for Hugh, suddenly shed a ludicrous light on every
one: on himself and Basile; on the pallid Lucian as he peevishly,
vainly, ordered Ramsey off the scene; on Julian as he posed in a
tragical disdain more theatrical than the actor's--who also saw the
game; on the captain's dumfounded young folk; on the senator, the
general, and the Californian, standing agaze, and on the two men with
them, whose extra--eagle-eyed, stallion-eyed--solicitude told him they
were the lenders of the canes. All at once, still holding the anguished
Basile, he saw, and observed that the actor saw, the heaped-up nonsense
of the affair. Ramsey's mood leaped to both of them like a flame, and
they laughed together while Hugh exhorted the exhorter: "Go below! For
your life, go!"
The man cast a pleading look on the twins, but when Lucian granted him
only a withering smile, and Julian with his cane in his folded arms said
majestically, "Go, you hopeless ass," he went--with haste.
Out of the group by the bell John Courteney, apparently as unmoved as if
all this were but common routine, answered Watson's silent look with his
own while the pilot, taking his ear from a speaking-tube, grasped the
bell-rope.
"Wood?" asked the captain.
XXXVIII
THE CANE AGAIN
"Partly, sir."
All marked the qualifying word though at the same time all witnessed the
cross-fire of challenge and retort that flashed between the three
brothers. Basile had dropped his weapon and ceased to struggle, yet
still showed a mental torture, the same he had betrayed at the previous
afternoon's worship, and in all hearts, even those of the senator's
group, it brought back for him the same tender indulgence as before.
Meanwhile Ramsey and the cub pilot had caught up the cane's two parts
and laid them in the hands of the actor, who quietly resheathed them
while Basile mocked the twins. "So that's the way Hayles," jeered the
lad, "stand by a cat's-paw friend, is it?"
"Hayles," said Julian, "never settle difficulties before ladies."
The boy resisted again as his laughing sister half knelt to lay her arms
about him soothingly. "Oh, these ladies won't mind," he tearfully
sneered. "Come on! Here's your man, with the steel, and three behind
each of you to see fair play!" A wave of the hand indicated Lucian and
the canes' owners on one side, and himself, the cub pilot, and Hugh on
the other. The latter and the players, momentarily together, gave sudden
attention, but again the humor of the situation saved it. The laugh was
general; the young people about the captain, whom his equanimity and
Ramsey's and Mrs. Gilmore's stay had emboldened to linger, drew near;
and the three groups became one.
The twins themselves might have made fair actors, though no one ever had
dared suggest it. Julian scowled on Gilmore and Hugh and half drew the
other cane from his folded arms, but then looked distantly away, while
Lucian with an indolent air said to the younger brother:
"Babe! Hayles never line up on two sides."
To retort, the lad had to snatch Ramsey's fingers from his lips and so
lost his chance, while under her breath she futilely implored him to
desist.
"I'm not!" he wailed back at her. "I'm not ridiculous! You! you'll find
judgment-day ridiculous, I don't doubt--oh, good Lordy! stop your
eternal titter."
The great bell thundered and he recoiled. "There! wood! 'wood, partly.'
And partly what else? d'you know? Another funeral." In spite of her fond
restraints he cried out to the company: "With more to follow! The
bishop----"
But the sister's fingers were on his lips once more and while she half
whispered, half laughed her tender chidings old Joy appeared, coming
from the bishop's bedside. Ramsey turned a beseeching look to Hugh but
the general had halted the nurse with a private question and now
proclaimed:
"Th-the bishop's doing as well's could be exxxpected."
"Expected!" cried Basile, "yes, when he's expected to die. And then
it'll be my turn."
"It won't!" exclaimed Ramsey. "It sha'n't!" The boat was rounding to at
a wood-yard and most of the company were glad to turn away to the
shoreward scene. The boy dropped his head on the black woman's shoulder.
"Oh, mammy, if I was the bishop, or you, or even Ramsey, I wouldn't
mind, for I could be ready to go. Oh, God! why can't I get religion?"
"Why, 'caze you done got it, sugah boy. You done got religion 'istiddy."
Only the twins smiled. The captain stepped down to the roof's forward
edge as the boat neared shore.
"And you're not going to get anything else," said Ramsey, snatching the
lad's hands and finding them cold.
He moaned in unbelief: "What do you know about it? Oh, sis', if I could
only die doing some fine thing!--in a fight!--or an explosion!--anything
but a deathbed!"
"Law'! honey," interposed old Joy, "what you want to do fine things faw?
You's done got religion. You on'y ain't got peace. Come to de bishop.
Gawd won't let a religious enquireh kitch noth'n'. I 'uz tellin' de
bishop 'bout missy an' you, bofe gitt'n' religion 'istiddy, an' he say,
s'e: 'Go, fetch yo' young missy; fetch bofe.'"
"We'll go!" said Ramsey before the willing boy could reply, though from
every side came protests.
For once Hugh and the twins were in accord. "You must not!" called Hugh.
"You shall not!" said Julian.
She glanced from one to the other, tinkling her prettiest, and suddenly
flushed. "We will!"
The twins sent Hugh a hot look which he paid back with a cold one, while
Mrs. Gilmore said:
"I'll have to go with you, Ramsey."
For one breath the girl was taken aback, but then:
"Yes," she said, "to the door, that's all."
As they turned after Basile and Joy she added: "'Twas I, you know, that
got the bishop sick in the first place."
At the corner of the texas they glanced back but were reassured to see
the cub-pilot disappearing on the nearest boiler-deck stair at the
outer, depopulated side of the boat, the actor and Hugh moving toward
it, and the twins holding the field and scowling after their opponents.
Nevertheless, the moment the sister and wife passed from view Julian
sturdily, Lucian feebly, pressed after Hugh and the player. The last
witness was gone; now was their time.
"Mr. Courteney," said Julian. The other two looked back and paused.
Lucian spoke: "Mr. Gilmore, you have my cane, sir."
The player smiled. "Is this really your cane?"
With a ripping oath Julian put in: "What's that to you, you damned
Gypsy? Give him the stick!"
The player let go a stage laugh. Hugh took a step forward with a grave
show of self-command hardly justified. "Mr. Hayle," he said, "you don't
want to be another 'hopeless ass,' do you?"
"Gawd!" Julian rose to his toes and lifted and brought down his cane.
But it never reached its mark. One stride of the actor, one outflash of
arm and staff, foiled the blow, and when a second was turned on him the
cane flew from Julian's hand he knew not how and dropped ten feet away.
He dared not leap after it but faced the skilled fencer, blazing
defiance though fully expectant of the unsheathed dirk. But no dirk was
unsheathed. Lucian, forgetting his feebleness, sprang for the cane and
had dropped to one knee to snatch it up when Hugh set foot on it.
"No!" said Hugh. The convalescent straightened up, his brow dark with an
anguish of chagrin, and before he could find speech Hugh was adding:
"Wait. I'll give it to you."
"Don't!" cried Gilmore. "Keep it!"
"No," wearily said Hugh, glaring on the glaring twins, "we're all
belittled enough now." He caught up the cane, drew its dagger, snapped
it in half on the deck, and resheathed the stump. Then tossing the point
into the river he said: "Here, Mr. Gilmore, swap."
With an actor's relish for a scene the actor swapped, and the
convalescent wept with rage as Hugh, having treated the second cane like
the first, tendered it to him.
"Don't take it!" cried his brother; "don't touch it!" And then to
Gilmore: "Don't you hand me that one, either! Don't you dare!"
Yet thereupon the actor dared, saying: "But for--others--I'd trounce you
with it like a schoolmaster."
The words were half drowned by Lucian, who snatched from Hugh the cane
he tendered, answering the less crafty Julian, "Take it, you fool! take
any odds they'll give!" and, while Julian complied, adding to Hugh: "Oh,
you'll pay for this--along with the rest of it!"
"You'll pay for this first!" put in Julian, "and with your lives--the
pair of you!"
Hugh and Gilmore merely turned again toward the stair, but a voice
stopped them though addressed only to the twins.
"Did you say pair?" it inquired.
The boat was at the bank; her great wheels were still. The sun's last
ray tipped the oak-leaf caps of her soaring chimneys. Once more from the
cook-house rose the incense of coffee, hot rolls, and beefsteak, and
from her myriad lamps soft yellow gleams fell upon the wind-rippled
water and, out of view on the other side, into the tops of the dense
willows. Over there the senator, the general, and the company that had
gone with them looked down upon two movements at once. The funeral they
could not help but see; the other was the wooding-up. The mud clerk had
measured the corded pile, and the entire crew, falling upon it like
ants, were scurrying back and forth, outward empty-handed, inward
shoulder-laden, while those who stood heaping the loads on them sang as
they heaped:
"Do you belong to de Vot'ess' ban'?"
"You don't mean just the pair, do you?" repeated Watson. He looked down
loungingly from a side window of the pilot-house. "There's anyhow five
on our side," he added. "I'm in that tea party."
Julian had caught breath to retort, when from a new direction a beckon
checked him and at the nearest corner of the texas he beheld again
Ramsey. Mrs. Gilmore was not with her, but at her back were the nurse
and Basile. The boy wore such an air of terror that the player instantly
pressed toward him.
Ramsey's beckon, however, was to Hugh. Her bright smile did not hide her
mental pain, which drew him to her swiftly despite the twins' deepening
frown. The two brothers heard the question she asked him when he was but
half-way; perhaps she meant they should. "Can you call through Mr.
Watson's speaking-tube to mom-a--and the commodore?"
"Certainly."
"Tell them"--tears suddenly belied her brightness--"to come up to the
bishop, quick. I'm 'fraid--afraid----"
A word or two more Hugh failed to hear, but even the twins, at their
distance, read them on her lips:
"The bishop's going to die."
She sprang to Gilmore. His arm was about Basile; he was trying his
pulse. The twins would have followed but in between came
senator--general--all that company, moved by physical foreknowledge of
an invitation whose drawing power outweighed whatever else land, water,
sky, or man could offer. Suddenly it pealed in their midst:
"Ringading tingalingaty, ringadang ding----"
The captain stayed by his chair. "Cast off," he said to the mate
beneath, and to Watson above: "Back your starboard."
A jingle sounded below. The steam roared from one scape and widened
aloft like a magic white tree--twice--thrice. "Stop her." It ceased. She
swung. "Go ahead on both." Two white trees shot up together and
trembling she went. Down in the quivering cabin, round the shining
board, every one's spirit rose with the rising speed.
"Senator, 'twas I sent you them hot rolls, suh."
"Why, thank you! But--don't disfurnish yourself."
"General, them fried bananas----"
"Th-th-thank you, sir, I have a suff-fficient plenty."
Only the seats of the Courteneys, the Gilmores, Ramsey, and Basile stood
vacant.
XXXIX
FORTITUDE
"Courage," the slender play was called. It is to be regretted that we
cannot fully set it forth, for Gilmore was himself its author.
Also because, whatever it lacked, there was in it a lucky fitness for
this occasion, since, conditions being what they were on the decks above
and below, the one strong apology for giving it was the need of
upholding the courage of its audience.
It was even a sort of kind rejoinder to the various ferments kept up by
the truculent twins, the pusillanimous exhorter, and the terrified
Basile. Its preachment might well have been less obvious, though lines,
its author bade Hugh notice, never overbalanced action, never came till
situation called them. It was to the effect, first, that courage is
human character's prime essential, without which no rightness or
goodness is stable or real; and, second, that as no virtue of character
can be relied on where courage is poor, so neither can courage be
trusted for right conduct when unmated to other virtues of character,
the chiefest being fidelity--fidelity to truth and right, of course,
since fidelity to evil is but a contradiction of terms. "From courage
and fidelity," it was the part of one player at a telling moment to say,
"springs the whole arch of character," and again, "These are the Adam
and Eve of all the virtues." (Adam and Eve were decided to be quite
mentionable. Mention was not impersonation.)
Naturally the Gilmores knew every line of the play.
"As perfectly," ventured the two young Napoleonites, "as John the
Baptist knows the moral law, don't you?"
"Better, I infer," said Gilmore abstractedly. They were in the ladies'
cabin, awaiting its preparation as a stage, behind the curtains that
screened it from the gentlemen's cabin, the auditorium. His wife smiled
for him.
"Even my Harriet," she said, "knows one or two parts. She's played Miss
Ramsey's in emergencies."
Her half-dozen feminine hearers flinched. Yet one said, excusingly:
"That's a servant's part, anyhow."
"And Harriet's her very size and shape," said another.
And another, drolly: "They're enough alike to be kin!"
"Harriet's free, isn't she?" asked the first.
"Yes," replied Mrs. Gilmore, without a blush, looking squarely at Hugh,
who stood among them silent.
"You'd never notice she was a nigrah if you wa'n't told," said another,
"or didn't see her with nigrahs."
But then said a youth, cousin to one of the girls: "Yet after all a
nigrah she is."
"No such thing!" said his cousin. "After all that's what she isn't. Our
own laws say she isn't."
"Well, I say she is. One drop of nigrah blood makes a nigrah--for me,
law or no law."
"Well, that's monstrous--for me."
"Yes, your politics being what they are."
"My pol'--I'm as good a Southerner as you, any day!"
"All right, but I shan't play if that born servant is allowed to take
any but a servant's part."
To Hugh a crisis seemed to impend, but he held off for the Gilmores, who
seemed to be used to crises.
They had not thought of Harriet, they said, for any part but Miss
Ramsey's. Miss Ramsey might find herself too distracted by--other
things. Or, even if not, the doctor, or the captain, might think
Harriet's contact less contaminating than Miss Ramsey's.
Their smile was not returned. Hugh gravely nodded but the rest shook
their heads. Impossible! And suppose it were possible! they were not
going to shun Miss Ramsey for refusing to shun "a sacred duty." By duty
they meant the bishop, aware of his illness but not of his extremity,
and none but Hugh and the Gilmores knowing that only two doors from the
bishop lay Basile, also stricken, and that Ramsey and the old nurse were
with the boy. The young people fell into pairs confessing their contempt
for the besetting peril. Vigil is wearisome and they were almost as
weary of blind precautions as, secretly, were Hugh and others. The two
Napoleonites "didn't believe doctors knew a bit more than other
folks--if as much!" The two cousins so unimpeachably Southern were
"convinced that contagion never comes by contact," and two or three said
"the cholera was in the air, that's where it was, and whoever was going
to get it was going to get it!" They all agreed that "if Miss Ramsey,
because of the extra strain she was under, had lost her nerve----"
"She has not," put in Hugh with a very solemn voice and solid look. The
girls nudged elbows. "But," he added, to Mrs. Gilmore, "for the better
comfort and safety of both sick and well we must let her off."
Must! Ahem! The amateurs lifted their brows. Of which was he sole owner,
Miss Hayle or the boat? "Orders!" softly commented one tall youth.
"Yes," said Hugh, facing him with a gaze so formidable, yet to the rest
so comical, that the nudgings multiplied.
"Miss Hayle's songs, however," Hugh began to add.
"Yes, how about the songs?" asked some one. "They're no servant's part
and they're out before the curtain."
"She must sing them," replied Hugh. "They won't keep her long and they
involve no contact."
"Right!" exclaimed one. "Good!" said another, and yet another. "Without
them we might as well give up the whole business." From the curtains
through which he had been peering the actor glanced back. "Those
footlights are capital," he said to his wife, and then, for the joy of
all: "We've got a full house!"
The wife looked, turned quickly, and murmured to him: "Hayle's twins in
the front row."
"Yes," he said, absently again, "with war in their eyes.... Now, Mr.
Hugh, if you'll send for Miss Hayle----"
"Harriet's gone for her," replied his wife.
"Here I am," spoke Ramsey at the door of a stateroom appropriated as a
passageway. And assuredly there she was; but by the magic of dress,
through the trained cunning of Mrs. Gilmore's mind and "Harriet's" hand,
and even more by the imprint of her new weight of experience, she was
Ramsey transformed, grown beautiful. An added year was in her face. A
chastened tenderness both lighted and shaded it, half veiling yet half
reasserting its innocent hardihood. The astonished amateurs hailed her
with a clapping of hands, in which, it pleased her deeply to notice,
Hugh Courteney, staring, took no share. Beyond the curtain the unseen
audience answered with a pounding of heels and canes in good-natured
impatience. Gilmore hurriedly waved away all the lads but Hugh, and Mrs.
Gilmore all the girls but Ramsey. To her she glided while Hugh and her
husband conferred on some last point.
"Well, dear," she said, pressing her backward into the stateroom, "are
you ready?"
"No, dear Mrs. Gilmore, please, no, I'm not."
"Ah, yes, you are. You'll go on from"--they passed out and entered the
next room forward--"from here. And mark! when you find nothing between
you and the people but the footlights, and their glare blinds you, don't
stand close over them trying to see, or they'll make you look scared and
pale, and you're not scared the least bit, are you?"
"I don't know," laughed Ramsey, softly, through tears. "I never was,
before; never had sense enough, mom-a says. But, oh, I know I'm ashamed.
I'm that 'shamed that I wouldn't wonder if I'm scared too. Oh, dear Mrs.
Gilmore, Basile's so sick! The doctors are doing all they can for him,
and mom-a and mammy Joy are with him; but he's so tortured with pain,
and with fright! And the bishop--he's pow'ful weak, as mammy Joy says.
One of those sweet sisters--of charity--I got her up through the
speaking-tube--oh, you know what I mean--and she's there now talking to
him _so_ beautifully! And down on the lower deck, freight deck, Madame
Marburg's sick too, and her son and the priest and the other sister are
with her and with the other sick ones--there's a dozen of them!" The
last words were to Gilmore as he and Hugh appeared at the outer door.
The actor stepped inquiringly into the narrow room and began a warning
whisper but Ramsey spoke on to wife and husband by turns: "And in the
face of all that here we are--or here I am--about to do the silliest,
most heartless thing in all my silly, heartless life. No, I'm not
ready."