snappin' turkle o' the Arkansass! I'm the horn-ed an' yalleh-belly
catfish o' the Mississip'! Glory, hallelu'! the sunburnt,
chill-an'-feveh, rip-saw, camp-meetin', buckshot, kickin'-mule
civilization whah-in I got my religion is good enough fo' me, all
high-steppin', niggeh-stealin' play-actohs an' flounced and friskin',
beau-ketchered Natchez brick-tops to the contrary notwithstayndin'! For
I'm a meek an' humble follower o' the Lawd Gawd A'mighty, which may the
same eternally an' _ee_-sentially damn yo' cowa'dly soul, you
stump-tail' little Hugh Co'teney up yandeh with yo' Gawd-fo'sakened,
punkin face an' yo' sawed-off statu'e!"
The gamblers sprang to hush him but the two "Arkansas killers" stepped
between and while the _Votaress_, backing out into the wake of the
_Westwood_, left the one pair insisting and the other protesting, the
exhorter settled the issue by breaking into song:
"'Though num'r-ous hosts uv migh-tye foes,
Though airth an' hell, my way op-pose,
He safe-lye leadns my soudl aa-logn:
His lov-ign-kide-ness, oh, how strogn!
His lov-ign-kide-ness! lov-ign-kide-ness!
His lov-ign-ki-i-i-ide-ness, oh, how strogn!'"
LII
LOVE RUNS ROUGH BUT RUNS ON
Turning east in the upper arm of Saint Francis Bend, with the mouth of
Saint Francis River just swinging out of sight astern and Helena an
hour's run behind, the _Votaress_ faced the rising sun.
Before the eyes of Hugh and Ramsey it soared gloriously into a sky
reddened not by presage of rain but by the smoke of the _Antelope_ and
_Westwood_. The intervening shore and waters glowed and quivered in
exquisite tints that renewed the world's youth and quite ignored all
human, especially all young human, troubles. Suddenly it lighted up the
black chimneys and scapes and white pilot-houses of the two boats ahead,
as, a league or so apart, they came doubling back northwest, up Walnut
Bend, to save in Bordeaux Chute the wide circuit of Bordeaux and Whiskey
Islands, to hurry on round the long north-and-south loop of Council Bend
and so have done with one of the most tortuous forty miles of the
Mississippi.
We mention these things because Hugh and Ramsey were students of them,
now and then together but never quite comfortable so, and now and then
apart but never quite comfortable so. Everywhere the boat's people were
awake. On the freight deck the crew squatted in circles, eating from
tubs. Away aft on the roof, from their quarters in the far end of the
texas, the whole flock of white-jackets had risen like gulls and were
down in the cook-house, pantry, and cabin rattling the crockery till it
echoed in every waking stomach. Already the _Votaress's_ divine breath
smelt of coffee, real coffee--_chaud comme l'enfer et noir comme le
diable--smelt_ of it, as, we fear, we shall never smell it again in this
trust-ridden world. It was Ned's watch at the wheel. Watson and his cub
had turned in. So had the first clerk. So had the twins, the senator,
the general. Few of us, at that hour, not having slept, are skylarks.
Yet the actor and the Californian still held vigil by the captain's bed.
Joy still hovered after her "young missy," and "Harriet" after Mrs.
Gilmore and the parson's wife. Ramsey and "Harriet" betrayed a vivid
interest in each other, a wonderfully generous thing on the maid's part,
Ramsey thought, the two being who they were. The commodore was better,
but the captain was not, and together or apart Hugh and Ramsey were more
consciously the prisoners, albeit the undaunted prisoners, of care and
sorrow than of anything else. When their feeling for the river's lore
drew them, by a spiritual gravitation, to a common centre--to learn, for
instance, that Council Bend and Council Island were named for one of
those historic "confabs" between the white man and the red which
shouldered the red brother once and forever away from the sunrise and
across the great river--that centre of gravity was the captain's chair,
their tutor the first mate.
Under the circumstances we hardly need begrudge a line or two more to
tell how, as far back as Delta, the _Votaress_ had begun to meet the
Louisville Saturday evening packets and to receive and return their
special salutes. One was a Hayle boat and one a Courteney. Such moments
were refreshing. Inquiry and information flowed through them as
naturally and beguilingly as a brook through a meadow and gave Hugh
opportunity to contemplate incidentally the play of air and light in
Ramsey's curls without her having the slightest suspicion of him!--gave
her chances to ply him with questions in autobiography and social
casuistry and to enjoy keenly the ridiculous majesty of his eyes and
voice, while the two dear chaperons talked apart as obliviously as if
she were merely asking him how deep the whiskey was in Whiskey Chute.
In the long run from Commerce to Norfolk came breakfast. Commerce was
another case of infant-city still-birth, Norfolk was less. Breakfast,
double-ranked, stoop-shouldered, mute: beefsteak and fried onions its
solar centre, with hot rolls for planets; Hugh at the ladies' table, the
first clerk at the gentlemen's. Then the boiler deck, toothpicks,
cigars, breezes, armchairs, spittoons, the sad news of the two deaths
up-stairs, the ugly news of the five passengers set ashore and the
reason thereof. Men spat straight and hard as they heard or told the
latter item, yet with tacit unanimity awaited the re-emergence of the
still secluded senator, general, and twins.
By Hugh's unsmiling forethought Madame Hayle, Ramsey, and the Gilmores
breakfasted in the pilot-house. With "Harriet" close to her elbow,
Ramsey ate at a window, standing, to watch the gliding shores and floods
and privily cross-examine, again in autobiography and at printing-press
speed, the willing maid-servant. At Island Fifty-Two another boat, the
_Shooting Star_, streamed by. At a plantation and wood-yard the
_Votaress_ paused to restock with dairy and kitchen-garden supplies and
to lash to her either side a thirty-cord wood flat, and now swept on
with the foam twenty feet broad at the square front of each while the
deck-hands trotted aboard under their great shoulder loads by one narrow
hook plank and came leaping back for more, and the loaders and pilers
chanted and chorussed:
"Oh, Shan-a-do'e, I loves yo' daught-eh--
Ah! ha! roll-in' riveh!--
Oh, ef she don't love me she'd ought teh--
Ah! ha!... bound away!... faw de wile ... Mis-'ou-ree!"
The foam and the swift wooding-up gave an illusion of speed to the boat
herself, and in what seemed no time at all the empty scows were dropping
away astern; but it was farewell for good and all to the _Westwood_, the
_Antelope_. And now Cat Island, its bend, its chute; Cow Island, its
bend, its chute; Horn Lake, a prehistoric loop of twelve miles, reduced
to three by Horn Lake Bend----
"Come, Ramsey." The call smote like a buffet. Memphis was almost in
sight. In the southwestern corner of Tennessee, just above Tennessee
Chute and the northwestern corner of Mississippi, was the fourth of the
Chickasaw Bluffs. On it sat Memphis, a city with churches, banks, and
the "electromagnetic telegraph." Its twelve thousand people of that day
are a hundred and thirty-five thousand now and have taken in almost out
of remembrance the small settlement of Pickering, or Fort Pickering, on
the down-stream end of the bluff, where the _Votaress_ that beautiful
morning landed and laid to rest Madame Marburg, the bishop, and Basile.
Aboard the _Votaress_, as in Tennessee Chute she faced again the morning
sun, two scenes were enacted at the same time. One took place below, on
the fore-castle; the other above and just aft of it, on the boiler deck.
In the lower there was but a single pine box, in the upper there were
two. In the lower stood the black-gowned priest, the two white-bonneted,
gray-robed sisters, Otto Marburg alone, and here a mass of immigrants
and there a majority of the crew. The upper scene included all the cabin
passengers--ladies seated--and half the boat's family. In fulfilment of
Basile's wish Hugh read: "I am the resurrection and the life." By Hugh's
invitation, given beforehand, the senator delivered a eulogy on the
bishop and added such tender praises of the boy, whom every one had
liked so early and so well, and gilded them with such delicate allusions
to the heroism of his mother, that few eyes were dry. The very twins
wept, though there was a touch of rage in their tears. By choice of the
parson's wife and sweetly led by her, they sang: "I would not live
alway." With streaming eyes Ramsey remembered how yearningly the poor
lad had clung to this dear earth, and she could only sit silent and
modestly wonder how anybody, under any fate that left them power to sing
at all, could sit there--stand there--on that boat, that river, in the
splendor of that sun, the beauty of that landscape, and call life a "few
lurid mornings."
A third scene occurred as the boat, facing westward, reached the head of
President's Island, fairest island in all the river, and coming into
full view of Memphis, a short league beyond, tolled her solemn bell and
landed at Pickering. Others on the lower deck besides Madame Marburg had
passed away in the night but had either been laid under the wet sands of
the water's edge in some wild grove down-stream or were not quite in
time, so to speak, for this landing. Contemplated from each deck by a
numerous gathering and from the pilot-house by Watson, Mrs. Gilmore, and
"Harriet," a small procession followed the priest and the three
boxes--borne by white-jackets--ashore and out of sight where a small
wooden church spire, inland behind the bluff, peered over its crest.
Madame Hayle leaned on Julian's arm, Ramsey on Lucian's, Hugh walked
with Marburg, the senator with the general, the first clerk with Ned,
the Californian with the cub pilot. By and by they returned, outwardly
unburdened, and the moment the last tread, the Californian's, was on the
stage, Watson's bells jingled and the _Votaress_ swung out and moved up
to the Memphis wharf-boat. But there Hugh, the first clerk, the steward,
and the doctor went up into town, and it was a long hour before they
reappeared and the black smoke billowed again from her chimneys and she
backed out and started up and away around "Paddy's Hen and Chickens."
The "family of that name"--to quote Watson--were a group of four islands
so entitled from earliest flatboat days, clustered in the river, just
above the town. Since that day two of the chicks have flown, or grown,
to the mainland, and the mother bird is now merely the "Old Hen" with
one "Chicken Island," while "Poor Paddy," we are told, "works on the
railway."
In its first forty leagues above Memphis the river went--has gone--still
goes--through more violent writhings than in any like part of its whole
course, running almost twenty crazy miles to make two sane ones--made
finally, in the republic's hundredth year, by Centennial Cut-off. On an
average there was an island for every four miles of river, or, say,
three for every hour of the _Votaress's_ progress, and in this high
water she was running all their chutes. A great resource such incidents
were, on that particular day, to Ramsey. At any moment when conversation
needed to be started, stopped, or turned, here was her chance. Some of
the islands covered many square miles, contained large plantations, and
had names as well as numbers. Island Forty, reached about ten o'clock,
was also Beef Island. Number Thirty-eight, which they began to pass half
an hour later, was Brandywine Island. To pass Island Thirty-five on its
short side at full speed took half an hour, and Forked-Deer Island,
which kept the boat flying up a narrow chute from half-past two till
three o'clock, was old Twenty-seven and Twenty-six grown together.
Now, these things are geography rather than history. But for at least
two souls aboard the _Votaress_ they were more history than geography.
History--they were life! the outer frame of life so really lived that
for those two souls it would be history thenceforth to life's end. And
here comes in some pure philosophy from the two pilots: to wit, that if
you turn any old maxim over you will always find another truth on its
other side. They reached this conclusion, through Ned's remarking that
the course of true love never runs smooth.
"That," said Watson, "depends. It depends a lot on who they air that's
a-takin' the course. Ef they're the right ones, a real for-true pair,
sech as the wayfarin' man though a pilot kin see _air_ a pair, like----"
"Two gloves," said Ned.
"Yass, or galluses--I misdoubt ef there's anything in the world that'll
run so smooth through and over and around and under so much cussed
roughness as what true love will."
The remark was justified before their eyes. The two whom they
contemplated, outwardly so unlike, were in their essence so of a kind
that they belonged each to each as simply and patently as the first
human pair. They saw it so themselves. Society about them was strangely
primitive--a "clapboard civilization," the actor named it to his wife at
their pilot-house point of view--and the "for-true" pair in sight below
them took frank advantage of its conditions to appropriate and accept
each other as simply and completely as if these weird conditions--with
their Devil's Elbow, Race-ground, Island, Tea-table, and Back-oven--were
a veritable Eden as Eden was before the devil got in. Without a note of
courtship or coquetry love ran ever more and more smoothly, growing
hourly and receiving each accession as we have seen the Mississippi
receive Red River--merely by deepening its own flow--but, unlike the
Mississippi, gaining in transparency as it gained in depth and power.
Since leaving Memphis this love without courtship or coquetry had grown
under the effulgence of Madame Hayle's immediate presence like a
grain-field in sunshine. On her return from the triple burial, through
sheer exhaustion, she had fainted away. Borne upstairs by the
physician's command and allowed the roof but forbidden the lower deck
for twenty-four hours, she had let Mrs. Gilmore and "Harriet" assume her
pious task turn about, going and coming by after stairs. And so love
grew on. But so did hate, so did craft, all three, to borrow the figure,
going and coming by the after stairs of general intercourse.
LIII
TRADING FOR PHYLLIS
This afternoon was cooler than any of the three before it.
Change of latitude, assuredly; but also a sky half blue, half gray, and
a brisker air. Yet for that small minority of the ladies, who rather
craved than feared the sunlight, the boat's roofs--since custom debarred
them from the boiler deck--were still its most inviting part. After a
few modifications of dress a very pleasant refuge those roofs were,
although when the boat's course led her into the wind it was good to
shut a sash or two if you were in the pilot-house, or to draw your
chairs into the lee of something if on the open deck. Madame Hayle,
urged by all to seek repose in her stateroom, said to Hugh and the
Californian, behind one of the chimneys:
"Me, I fine it mo' betteh to breathe on that deck than to bleach in that
cabin."
Her presence was to the Californian's advantage also, in his desire to
be near Ramsey, and indeed the same was true of the two younger clerks
and the cub pilot. And this advantage was heightened by the fact that
there were such definite things to be considered wherever two or three
came together. The need to keep up the passengers' spirits was as real
as ever and a number of resources for doing it required to be discussed.
Ramsey mentioned the unidentified man with the cornet but found no
seconder. His "Life on the Ocean Wave" was thought hardly convincing and
his "Bounding Billow, Cease thy Motion" seemed to clash with the
sentiment for an ocean life and to suggest uncomfortable symptoms.
Undaunted, she tried again. Through Basile she had early discovered
three striplings of the circus ring, the "Brothers Ambrosia." Their true
name, her cross-examination had revealed, was Vinegar. In star-spangled
tights they would give some real "acrobatics," then some "aerial globe
dancing," equally star-spangled and even more up-side-down, and finally
a bit of "miraculous walking" on champagne bottles set upright on the
dining-table. This proposition was accepted without audible dissent,
only the parson's wife not voting. Then the Californian spoke for a
self-styled "young gent" and "amateur professor" who had eagerly
volunteered to "take everybody's breath away" by the magic of his tricks
with hats, handkerchiefs, and cards, and to "throw them into
convulsions" with his "evening cat fight among the chimney-pots." But
"Beware the laugh that sours overnight," Mrs. Gilmore said, and the
decision was prompt, Madame Hayle voicing it, that as convulsions could
be brought on and breath taken away by the cholera itself the young
gent, through "California," be gratefully requested to await a situation
either less desperate or more so.
The gold hunter admitted the wisdom of this action, though his humble
spirit felt acutely its discrediting reflection on himself, especially
when--with only the kindest meaning--Ramsey laughed. He bravely kept his
pain to himself and said nothing to disown the "amateur professor." With
a brief aside to Hugh, to which Hugh nodded, he slipped away to the
lower deck and for nearly two hours made his nursing skill so valuable
to "Harriet" among the immigrants that her fearless mind overlooked the
main object of his stay; which was to defend her from any stratagem of
the twins and others, that Marburg might not detect in time or might be
unable to cope with. At length, puzzled to know why Mrs. Gilmore did not
appear, he was leaving, when at the foot of the narrow stair under the
kitchen he met Lucian coming down. They stopped. He smiled. "Howdy!" he
said.
Lucian stood silent.
"Can't come down here, you know," said the gold hunter, and instantly
Lucian was white hot.
"Who tells you," he drawled, "what I may or may not do?"
"Who? oh--just a little black dog."
"Black--_what?_"
"You heard. He's a funny little cuss; like you, a trifle puny. Has
coughin' fits. Coughs six times each fit. Spits up a chunk o' lead ev'y
time he coughs. Want to see him?"
Lucian's unaffrighted eyes blazed down, though his reply was as if to
himself. "Great God! if my brother----"
"Oh," kindly said the Californian, "he ain't fur off. Go, get him. I'll
follow you, lock-step."
Lucian turned and went, the speaker adding as he followed close:
"Ladder's no place for scienced fighting, you know."
They found Julian, evidently waiting, on the passenger guards just
forward of the pantry gangway. But before words could be exchanged the
cub pilot came along by way of the main staircase, escorting the
physician from the lower deck. The latter passed on up the wheel-house
steps to the roof, but the "cub" hung back. "California" faced him.
"What's the fraction? The captain?"
The youth nodded. His inquirer waved him away.
"All right. I'll come. You go on." The boy complied.
Julian had swelled for encounter, but a warning look from Lucian checked
him and he let the Californian speak first.
"Here," said the gold-digger, "I'm fixed. You're not. True, I could loan
you the twin to mine, but----"
Julian's lip curled. "'But'--you're not hungry to fight."
"Oh, other things being equal, I have an appetite! Yes, sir-ee, Bob
Hoss-Fly, and a red dog under the wheelbarrow! But"--smiling
again--"let's do things in scientific order. You two claim that you
Hayle folks own that forty-year-old white gal down-stairs which you call
a runaway niggeh, and which we'll allow she is one. Well, I'll buy you
two's share in her--providing I can buy the rest of her from your two
ladies up-stairs--and fight you afterward or not as the case may
require. Now, what'll you take for your said two shares, right here,
cash down, gold; not dust but coin, New Orleans Branch Mint? Going
at--what do I hear?"
The spendthrift pair stared on each other, thinking with all their
might. But they failed to think that on the deck above them, in group
with Mrs. Gilmore, Hugh, the parson's wife, Ramsey, and old Joy, the
ownership of Phyllis was being fully set forth by their mother to their
own whilom champions the senator and the general, or that Ramsey was
about to be sent down to the stateroom of the mother and daughter for
documentary evidence.
"What do I hear?" repeated the Californian, watching his own hands as
the right drew double-eagles from his belt and stacked them in the left.
Eagerly asking themselves what might be their tempter's motive, the pair
thought primarily of the white slave's well-preserved beauty and the
rarity of women in the far West. With that came a stinging remembrance
of her glaring Hayle likeness and then of their father's old
scheme--averted by their mother--to sell the girl forever out of sight
and reach. And then came the pleasanter thought that at any rate here
was a chance to put this daredevil at odds with the hated Gilmores as
well as with their own mother and sister, the Courteneys, and all the
Courteney clan. Till now they had felt that, if only for self-respect
and good standing, they must recover their property, seize Phyllis on
the spot, if they could possibly command the backing to do it. But this
was now very doubtful. Something had happened to the senator's mind,
while the general was but his echo and the element called "others" was
strangely sluggish. And, finally, or rather, first and last, the
brothers were thrilled with the prodigal's lust for ready money. So far
they saw and no farther, but so far so good; here seemed to be an
unguarded opening in the enemy's line--to use a phrase the great valley
was one day to know by heart--and the warier of the pair ventured in.
Said Lucian:
"We're Uncle Dan's sole legatees."
"Then name your price for her, lock, stock, and barrel."
"Want to take her only to Kentucky, or to California?"
"Californy--maybe Oregon."
"To keep house for you--single gentleman?"
"Yes, sir."
"When do you expect to come back?"
"Never."
The questioner glanced back to his brother. Both were gratified to note
that the bargain would work no relief to Hugh or the Gilmores, but
Julian wanted better assurance that it would not free a runaway slave or
make her a lawful wife. He turned abruptly, and so it happened that all
three failed to see Ramsey, in dark attire and with Joy close behind,
emerge an instant from the pantry gangway and shrink again into it. On
the return from her stateroom to the roof, for mere variety, she had
taken this direction. Said Julian as he turned:
"You're a Kentuckian, sir. Henry Clay man?"
"No. Only don't allow anything said again' him."
"Abolitionist?"
"No, sir-ee." The emphasis was sprightly.
The twins looked at each other once more. Julian nodded.
"One thousand dollars," said Lucian....
Let us go back a step or so and up to the hurricane-deck. We have named
Hugh as in the group about Madame Hayle; but he went and came. In his
absences the matrons debated the Phyllis matter as it involved the
Gilmores, trying to find some way not to leave it an undivided burden on
Hugh and the _Votaress_. It was on one of his quiet reappearances,
reporting his father "easier," that Ramsey put in:
"Mom-a, the senator's a lawyer. Send for him--and the general--and talk
them over to our side. You can do it. You can talk anybody into
anything! You always could!"
Madame Hayle and Hugh looked at each other very much as the twins were
doing about that time on the guards next below, and Hugh said:
"I will go bring them."
"Ah, if you please, yass, go."
He brought them and they were among madame's auditors when later she
said, addressing her words wherever they fitted best, so that even old
Joy got her share:
"Had it not have been for Phylliz, Dan Hayle, he wouldn' neveh took that
troub' to wride that will. But I insiz' he shall wride it,
biccause--Phylliz. Tha'z all. An' biccause Phylliz he wrode it. But he
say to me----"
"When was this?" inquired the senator.
"Tha'z when those twin' make him thad visit, Walnut Hill'. He say: 'W'ad
uze to you if I make my laz' will? I give any'ow everything to those
twin'.' An' tha'z biccause" (to old Joy) "thad chile w'ad die----"
"Drownded," murmured the nurse. "Ayfteh dat transpiah he take a shine to
ev'y man-chile he git his ahm aroun'."
Madame resumed: "An' I say to him: 'Give all the rez' to who' you want,
but Phylliz--to me.' 'No!' he say, 'you, you'll put her free!'"
"Why didn't he want her set free?" asked Ramsey.