themselves pointed out to the kind that see only what they are shown the
smoke of another boat, across the forests on the Arkansas side, in Old
Town Bend. There were ways for some to know even at that distance that
she was a craft they had never yet seen, but every two minutes the
distance grew less by a mile. Presently, as the nearer boat, giving the
bar's eastern head a wide berth, swung once more into the north, the
_Enchantress_ glided into view on the larboard bow hardly two miles
away. But before the _Enchantress_ as well, looking south across the
same interval, gleamed a picture worthy of her delight. For there came
the _Votaress_, curling white ribbons from her cutwater, her people
waving and cheering, a swivel barking from her prow, and the whistles
high up between her chimneys roaring in long salute.
By no premeditation could the unpremeditated scene have been finer. The
_Votaress_, as she took the wider circuit against the Mississippi shore,
caught the whole power of the setting sun on all her nearer side while
she swept close along an undivided curtain of autumn forest drenched in
the same sunlight and quaking to her sudden breeze. North and west of
her, where the sand-bar lay bare of trees, the _Enchantress_, larger,
stronger, swifter, moved in her own shade but was set against the far
splendor of a saffron, green, and crimson sky in which the fiery sun
showed only its upper half sinking beneath the landscape. The lights of
all her decks, just lit, gave no vivid ray but glinted like gems on a
court lady. Her bridal whiteness was as pure hid from the sunbeams as
her sister's bathed in them. From both the high black smoke streamed
away through the evening calm and from their twinkling wheels the foam
swept after them like trains of lace. We speak for our poet, who,
lacking fit imagery of his own, recalled one of Jenny Lind's songs:
"I see afar thy robe of snow,
I see thy dark hair wildly flow,
I hear thy airy step so light,
Thou com'st to wish thy love good night.
Good night, my love, good night."
Good night, _Votaress_! He could not know, nor Ramsey, nor any of those
among whom they stood, that these bends were never again to see you in
your beauty--though in tragedy, yes! yes! They knew that in the
shipyards of the Ohio you were to receive a beautiful rejuvenation; but
knew not that then, as a dove may be caught by a lynx, you were to be
caught by a great war, a war greater than the great river, and should
return to these scenes a transport; a poor, scarred, bedraggled consort
to gunboats; slow reptilian monsters of iron ugliness and bellowing
ferocity. They knew not of days when you must swarm with blue
soldiers--including Marburg--sometimes hot and merry for battle,
sometimes shot-torn, fever-wasted, yellow-eyed, a human rubbish of camp
and siege, lighter part of the deadly price of conquered strongholds and
fallen cities--Forts Henry and Donelson, Columbus, Island Ten, Fort
Pillow, Port Hudson, Vicksburg, Memphis; or that, after all, in
recovered decency, honored poverty, you should wear out a gentle old age
as a wharf-boat to your unspeakable inferiors. And neither could they,
those voyagers on the new steamer, foresee the happier vision of their
_Enchantress_ living through the war charmedly unscathed, sharing the
palmiest days of the Mississippi's navigation without ever being
surpassed in speed or beauty, even by younger Courteney boats, and at
last falling asleep peaceably at her moorings hard by the vast riverside
railway warehouses on the outskirts of a greater New Orleans.
All this forces its way through the mind while we see the meeting boats
cover half the run between them. On the _Enchantress_ a deck-hand
mounted the capstan.
"They're going to sing," hurriedly said Ramsey to Hugh. "I wish they'd
sing ''Lindy Lowe' that I've heard about!"
And whether by happy chance or on some signal dropped down from him or
because the chantey was a new one and the crew were glad to show it off,
it was chosen. The two steamers passed close with a happy commotion
throughout both and the song swelled. Then the wooded crest of the bar
hid each from each, and Hugh turned to Gideon: "Now, commodore, if Miss
Hayle is willing I'd like to take you both below and show you over the
boat--before supper."
When their descent brought them to the boiler deck the song was yet in
full swing. When, passing on down, they reached the engine room the fact
was amusingly clear to many on all decks, among them the Gilmores, the
Californian, and Watson, that the singers had lit on a new bearing for
their lines and were singing them now in compliment to a certain two
whose story was by this time known to all on board. Whether, back
between the sweeping cranks and shafts of the two great engines and
wheels, behind the "doctor" and the "donkey" and with Hugh and Ramsey at
his elbows, the alert Gideon heard the song at all was doubtful; so deep
in debate were the two men, the quiet and the loud, on dimensions and
powers: length, beam, hold, stroke, diameters of cylinders and of
wheels, in such noted cases as the _Chevalier_, the _Eclipse_, the _J.
M. White_, the _Natchez_, _Antelope_, _Paragon_, _Quakeress_, and
_Autocrat_. The three were there yet when the song's last echo died,
with Island Sixty-four eastward astern, Sixty-five southward ahead, the
brief twilight failing and the supper bell ringadang-dinging.
At table a far-away whistle softly roared and the _Enchantress_
sonorously responded.
"A Hayle boat," said Ramsey to Hugh; "the _Regent_."
"And we're singing 'Lindy' again!" said Mrs. Gilmore.
Gideon, busy talking a few seats away, talked straight on, but a cloud
on his brow showed now that he had heard the song the earlier time.
Every one tried hard to listen to him and the melody with the same ears.
Under the table somebody's toe had no better manners than gently to beat
time.
LVIII
'LINDY LOWE
[Music: Come, smil-in' 'Lind-y Lowe,... de pooti-ess gal I know,...
On de fin-ess boat dat ev-eh float, In de O-hi-o, De Mas-sis-sip-pi aw
de O-hi-o.]
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, teef whiteh dan de snow,
On de finess boat dat eveh float,
In de O--hi--o,
De Mas--sis--sip--pi aw de O--hi--o.
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, to de Lou'siana sho',
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, by de Gu'f o' Mexico,
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, to de bayous deep an' slow,
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de moss wave, to an' fro,
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, de bell done ring to go,
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de muscadimons grow,
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, befo' de whistle blow',
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, de pride o' Lake St. Jo',
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, I love' you long ago,
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, I'll love you mo' an' mo',
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, how kin you treat me so?
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de sweet pussimmon grow
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, de steam-kyahs runs too slow,
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de blue pon'-lily grow,
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, O don't you tell me no!
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, I's bound to be yo' beau,
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de wile white roses grow,
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, de fust of all de row,
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, eyes sweeteh dan de doe,
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de white magnonia blow',
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, an' awake up, fiddle an' bow,
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, we'll a-dance de heel an' toe,
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, to de tchune o' Jump, Jim Crow,
(Chorus)
Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, come, de pootiess gal I know,
On de finess boat dat eveh float'
In de O--hi--o,
De Mas--sis--sip--pi aw de O--hi--o.
LIX
"CONCLUSIVELY"
Alone in the wide light of a harvest-moon that wrapped all shores in
deep shadow and turned the mid-channel to silver, Hugh and Ramsey stood
at the low front rail of the texas roof.
There were but few to see them, but every eye in range was aware of her
and of a refined simplicity of dress adorning a figure whose pliant
grace was the finishing touch to her joyous erectness. Hugh's gaze was
frankly on her, and his mind on the first night he had ever seen her,
when, with her hair wind-tossed in loose curls, she had stood at this
spot on the _Votaress_ and in carelessness of a whole world had sung
"The Lone Starry Hours."
Equally distant from them were the pilot-house behind and above and the
bell down forward on the skylight. To right and left on a thwartship
line just back of them towered the chimneys softly giving out their
titanic respirations. Watson, though off watch, was up at the wheel
beside his partner, pretending not to see the two beneath. In other
words, he was still, after eight and a half years, "in the game." The
Gilmores were with him, both in body and spirit.
Out forward of the bell, below it on the main roof, one of the boat's
builders, responsible for her till she should reach New Orleans, sat in
the captain's chair.
"After eight years and a half," Hugh himself had gravely begun to say to
Ramsey, when two men, "California" and a fellow smoker, sauntered across
the skylight roof close below. Gilmore, up in the pilot-house, was
annoyed.
"Our poet," he murmured to his wife, "will spill the fat into the fire
yet, if we don't stop him."
But the Californian had purposely encumbered himself with this stranger
to make it plain that, hover as he might, he waived all claim to her
attention. What better could a man do? And now he forbore even to look
her way. The abstention was as marked as any look could have been. As
they passed, Hugh was silent, but Ramsey spoke, her speech a light blend
of response and evasion.
"On the _Votaress_," she said, "the front of the texas didn't stand out
forward of the chimneys, like this."
"Doesn't this make a handsomer boat," the lover asked, "seen either
aboard or from the shore?"
Ramsey said yes, she had noticed the improvement from the Memphis
wharf-boat. "She was a splendid sight; yes, out in the stream, just
before her wheels first stopped. At least she was to any one loving
boats and the river."
"Then you haven't changed?" asked Hugh, not for information but in the
tone that always meant so much beneath the speech.
Her answer was merely to meet his gaze with a gentle steadfastness, each
knowing that the other's mind was overcircling all the years that had
divided them. Through those years they had exchanged no spoken or
written word. Yet according to Watson true love finds ways, large love
large ways, pure love pure ways. Sometimes love's friends really help;
help find ways, or keep ways found; even make chutes and cut-offs.
Gilmore, Watson, and the Vicksburg merchant happened to be Odd Fellows,
and the Gilmores, to whom letter-writing was, next to their profession,
their main pleasure, had been a sort of clearing-house for Friendship,
Love, and Truth--and especially for social news--to all the _Votaress's_
old coterie; Hugh, the pairs of Milliken's Bend, Vicksburg, and
Carthage, the boat's family, Phyllis, Madame Hayle, even old Joy--with
madame for amanuensis--and Ramsey herself. She and Hugh, had followed
every step in each other's course, upheld by a simplicity of faith in
friendship, love, and truth, which hardly needed to ask the one question
abundantly answered by this steadfastness of eye.
Now she looked away to the moon's path on the river, and the question of
change came back from her: "Have you?"
"Only to grow."
"You have grown," she said, "every way."
"And you," he replied, "every beautiful way. I have just said so to your
father."
Her response came instantly: "How did that happen?"
"We made it happen."
She looked at him again. "We," of course, meant "I." Truly she had grown
every beautiful way, but it was yet as wonderful as ever to stand,
saying what she had said, hearing what she was hearing, eye to eye, open
soul to open soul, with one who could make words--words at any
rate--happen between himself and Gideon Hayle. She looked this time not
alone into his eyes but on all his unhandsome countenance, and in a
surviving upflare of her younger days' extravagance thought whether,
among all time's heroes of the world's waters, there had ever been one
too great for Hugh Courteney's face. So looking she thrilled with the
belief that there was nothing such men had ever done which this one
might not some day, the right day, equal or surpass.
Again she looked away and as she looked the hovering Californian
murmured to his new-found confidant:
"You can't see the glory of her in this light nohow, unless you'd seen
her already in the full blaze of the cabin, or of broad day, with the
light in that red hair. If you had you wouldn't need even the moonlight
now. You'd only need to know she was there and you'd see her without
looking. I seen her in her first long dress, jest a-learning to fly and
some folks showing no more poetic vision than to call her 'almost
plain.' I saw the loveliness a-coming, like daybreak in the mountains.
And _he_ saw it. I saw he saw it. And now? I tell you, sir, her brow is
like the snowdrift, her throat is like the swan, and her face it is the
fairest--I never seen Annie Laurie, but if she's better looking or
sweeter behaving--I'd rather not. Anyhow they're enough alike to be
sisters. I've writ a poem on this one. Like to show--hmm? Hold on. It
don't quite suit me yet but--what's your hurry? When it does, I Joe!
it'll be a ripsnorter. I've worked eight year and a half on it and they
say genius is jest a trick o' takin' infinitessimal pains.... No, I'm
not sleepy. Reckon I'll go up to the pilot-house. So long. Pleasant
dreams."
While he so spoke Ramsey had said: "Here comes another boat, down in the
next bend. Or is she in the chute?"
"The chute," replied Hugh. "That's the old _Antelope_."
"Ah, up and running again! I know all about you and the _Votaress_
saving her people that awful night she sank."
"Who told you?"
"Oh, a dozen, at a dozen times; but the best was Phyllis, writing to
us."
"Phyllis behaved heroically that night; made up for all the past--though
really she'd done that before."
"I'm glad you feel that way," murmured Ramsey and suddenly asked: "Why
did you take my father to your room just now?"
"To show him the plans for another boat."
"Humph!" What crystalline honesty was in his answers, she pondered. They
were as prompt as a mirror's.
"Rivals," she remarked, "don't ordinarily show plans."
"Your father and I are not ordinary rivals."
What did that mean? Her, and not mere boats' plans? She did not look at
him this time. Like "California" she could see without looking. "Think
I'll rejoin the Gilmores," she sighed, as certain couples came up to see
the _Antelope_ go by. She feared a recurrence of "'Lindy Lowe." On the
way to the pilot-house she leisurely inquired:
"Do you think you'll ever build a finer boat than this?"
"Yes, and larger, and faster."
"Not this season?"
"No, I should hope not for many. Yet----"
"Boats' lives," she prompted, "are so uncertain."
"Yes, grandfather thinks----"
"Oh, if only he were here!" She paused to let Hugh notice that she had
"were" and "was" in hand at last. Then:
"How long will that boat be?"
"Three hundred and thirty feet. She'll have ten boilers. Her cylinders
will be forty-three inches, her stroke eleven feet. She'll carry
eighty-five hundred bales of cotton."
"Goodness! How wide will she be?"
"In the beam fifty. Over all, at the wheelhouses, ninety. Her wheels
will be forty-five feet in diameter and their buckets nineteen feet
span. You still like figures, boats' figures, I hope?"
She still liked, for second choice, to make him, to herself, ridiculous;
liked it even now while inwardly laughing and weeping at him for not
coming to personal matters infinitely more important. "Go on," she said,
"I like cabin figures. How long, wide, and high will the cabin be?"
"Two hundred and sixty-three by nineteen by sixteen."
"What'll her name be? Another e-double-s, of course?"
"No, I've just been telling your father--here comes the _Antelope_. I
was telling him that grandfather----"
An overhead roar of reply to the signal of the approaching boat drowned
all words, but Ramsey had learned on coming aboard that the grandfather
was still sound though beyond four score, and her one vivid wish now was
to know more not of him but of Hugh and her father. Yet she had to let
Hugh hand her up the pilot-house stair, and without him rejoined the
Gilmores while Watson spoke down to the man in the captain's chair as to
the light-draught _Antelope_ having come up through the chute of Island
So-and-so. She was just in time to accept her share in the splendor and
gayety of the two boats' meeting and passing. As the picture dissolved,
Mrs. Gilmore slyly pinched Ramsey's finger while asking Watson:
"Why don't our men sing? _I_ want some more 'Lindy!"
Had she not heard the signal for the lead? No, in the excitement she had
not, though both Ramsey and "California" had, there being to them an
unfailing poetry in the casting of the lead, whether by day or, as now,
by the glare of a torch basket let down close to the water under the
starboard freight guards. At one end of the breast-board the two ladies,
at the other the actor and the Californian, looked out and down. The
boat's builder had left his seat and stood with Hugh at the forward
rail. From the freight guards, far below, the leadsman, unseen up here
except to experienced "poetic vision," sent up a long-drawn chant
telling the fathoms of depth shown on the sounding-line that flew
forward from his skilled hand into the boat's moonlight shadow, plunged
to the river's bed, vibrated past his feet in the glare of the pine
torch, stretched aft while he chanted, and was recovered in dripping
coils and hove again.
"Mark under wa-ater, twai-ai-ain."
As the notes resounded Hugh looked up to the pilots and in his quietest
speaking voice repeated:
"Mark under water, twain."
But our concern here is mainly with those for whom the scene, the calls,
veiled two private conversations. Three or four times the one melodious
cry, following as many casts, rose from below, and each time, with all
its swing and melody left out, Hugh passed it on up to the pilots.
Between the strains Gilmore said softly to "California":
"My dear fellow, no. Every time we show ourselves their partisans we
make heavier hauling for them. They'd tell us so, only that--don't you
see?--they can't even do that. It would be _infra dig._" But in fact
Ramsey was just then telling something much like that to his wife.
"Yes," admitted the Californian, full of a new scheme, yet always
generous, "and that was a ten-strike, your wife, after supper, taking
Miss Hayle away from Hugh and Gideon in such gay style. Did you see
how't sort o' eased the old man's mind?"
The leadsman's cry changed and so came twice or thrice, Hugh as often
repeating it to the pilots, while Ramsey and Mrs. Gilmore, though
hearkening, whispered busily.
"Shoaling," commented Mrs. Gilmore to Ramsey.
"Not seriously," said the river-wise Ramsey. "Go on. What did you get
out of him at last?" She had a merry sparkle.
Once more the far-below cry rose to them and was restated by Hugh
without color or thrill. Ramsey well knew that so it was always sung and
spoken, yet she remarked:
"Hear that absurd difference--in those two voices."
"That's the difference between him and other men, Ramsey; even between
him and your father."
She liked that, though now she felt bitter toward him for not being more
like ordinary mortals.
"Go on," she lightly repeated. "If he won't make words happen with me I
must take him second-hand."
"You naughty girl! He'll tell you all you'll let him."
"Oh, I'll let him, all he'll tell me. What did he say?"
"He said the very best was, that under all your mantle of new
charms----"
Ramsey's soft laugh interrupted. "He didn't. He never said that, my
lady. He wouldn't know how. You said it."
"Well, he did say that under it all there's nothing lost of the Ramsey
we began with."
"The slanderer!" They laughed together. The calls of the lead were
passing unnoticed. "Mark above water, twain; mark, twain; quarter less,
twain; half, twain; nine and a half; by the mark, nine; nine feet."
"The slanderer! Why, that's actionable! I'll have the law on him!" The
speaker's mirth was overdone. As the leadsman sang another cry and Hugh
sedately spoke it she tinkled as of old and said: "Don't get excited,
captain. Keep cool."
Mrs. Gilmore sobered. "You may laugh, but I believe he's talked with
your father conclusively and will to you to-night, if you'll allow it."
"Humph! you don't know that he'll come near me. Aboard his own boat, on
her trial trip, he's got other fish to fry. But even if he should, don't
you see how absolute the deadlock is? Oh, you must have seen it these
eight years and more!--in spite of everybody's silence."
"We didn't. We don't see it even now, Gilmore and I. We don't believe
Captain Hugh sees any deadlock whatever. He merely knows you think you
do. You think to accept him would condemn him to death?"
"Mrs. Gilmore, I know it would. My brothers--may have broken promises
but they--keep--their--threats. You know that's the fashion of all this
country, from Cairo down."
"Ma-a-ark, twai-ai-ain," chanted the leadsman for his final call, and
not only Hugh but an echo from the land repeated it. To many an ear,
poetic ear, that echo is there yet, in all that country, from Cairo
down. But that is aside. Watson and his partner threw the wheel over and
the _Enchantress_ swept round for the chute.
In the bright moonlight Hugh and the boat's builder turned back toward
the solitary chair, placidly conversing. Gilmore talked on with
"California." His wife and Ramsey drew back into the corner behind them.
"Your brothers," murmured Mrs. Gilmore, "threatened Hugh's life just the
same before you came into the issue at all."
"Yes," said Ramsey, "and they're watching their chance yet. Julian told
me so this summer and Lucian berated him for 'showing his hand.' Oh,
that isn't the deadlock, by itself. The deadlock is that as long as Hugh
Courteney holds off the feud will keep, but when he doesn't I come in
and it won't; everything's precipitated. And so, you see?...
"Hmm! Hugh Courteney won't put himself, or me, or mom-a, where, in a
fight for his life, no matter who's killed the killing would be in the
family, and the killed would be ours, mom-a's--and--and mine. The twins
see that. Jule says it, and, what's worse, Luce says nothing. That's why
_they_ are entirely satisfied with the deadlock.... Look."
The boat's contractor was leaving the deck. Hugh had started toward the
pilot-house. But when Mrs. Gilmore looked she looked beyond him in
meditation.
"I know what you're thinking," said Ramsey. "But it'll never happen.
They've settled down to the ordinary term of a decent life, thank
God!... Here he comes. Think he'll talk to me? Yes, he will. He'll begin
where he left off." She laughed. "He's going to tell me the name of his
next boat, if he ever builds another. Anything 'conclusive' in that?"
Mrs. Gilmore was grave a moment longer and then brightly said: "There
might be! There may be! I can see--I can see how he--" She could not
finish. Hugh had entered.
His coming broke in upon another conversation, that of Gilmore and
"California."
"Old boy, no. Suppose it should work out as you plan. You leave us at
Natchez; that's easy. You live there a week, a month, free with your
gold and making friends--of the sort gold makes. You get into a
political quarrel with the twins--nothing easier--and in a clear case of
your own self-defence the two are:--
"'--Laid in one grave.
Sing tooralye,' etc."
"Wouldn't that be poetic justice? and ain't I a poet?"
"Undoubtedly. Then by miracle you come off scot-free."
"Not essential. I take my chances."
"Still, you have that hope; freedom is sweet. More-over, miracle of
miracles, what you did it for is never guessed. But, my dear fellow,
there are two who'd never need to guess. Like us they'd know and that
knowledge would sunder them forever. They'd never willingly look into
each other's faces again."
"Nnn-o. No, course they wouldn't. I seen that from the jump but I sort
o' hoped you'd maybe know some way to get round that; it being the only
real difficulty."
"Sorry, but I don't. Odd how narrow-minded one's friends can be, but
when they are--what can we do?"
"Yes, that's so.... Mr. Gilmore, you're not narrow-minded; I've got a
poem----"
It was there Hugh entered. But it was there, too, that Watson made a
move in his modest part of the game.