he drawled, "wants to see a scandalous fine moonlight picture of this
river, one they'll never forget, the best place from whence to behold it
is the texas roof, down here, out for'ard o' the chimneys."
"If Captain Hugh would go with us," pensively said Mrs. Gilmore, "we'd
all go." And soon the pilots were alone.
"Now," growled the younger, with his gaze down there on Ramsey, "don't
that beat you? Her making California stay so's Cap'n Hugh can't pair off
with her!"
"Be easy," said Watson; "that's according to Hoyle. Don't shoot till
they settle.... There. Now I'll go down and take care of California. By
cracky! run smooth or run rough, I believe it's going to go this time."
LX
ONCE MORE HUGH SINGS
Between that great eastward bend nearly opposite the mouth of the
Arkansas, which in later years was cut off and is now, or was yesterday,
Beulah Lake--between it and Ozark Island below--a white-jacket came up
from the passenger deck far enough to show his head to the watchman
above and warily asked a question.
"Six," was the reply. "Including me--seven."
The inquirer ran wildly down again, but the _Enchantress_ sped on
through the glorious moonlight as though he scarcely mattered. On the
texas roof Mrs. Gilmore sat with "California," her husband with Watson,
Hugh with Ramsey. But only the last two were out on its forward verge.
Mrs. Gilmore had found it cool there and with the others had drawn back
a few steps, into the pleasant warmth of the chimneys. For average
passengers the evening was far gone, but not for players, pilots,
Californians, or lovers--of the river.
A mile or so farther on, the white-jacket reappeared and, gliding by all
others to reach his captain, said, with mincing feet and a semicircular
bow, while presenting a tray of six, not seven, sherry cobblers:
"Sev'l gen'lemen's comp'ments, an' ax, will Mis' Gil'----"
"What gentlemen? Who?"
"Sev'l gen'lemen, yassuh. Dey tell me dess say, sev'l gen'lemen. Sev'l
gen'lemen ax will Mis' Gilmo' have de kin'ness fo' to sing some o' dem
same songs she sing night afo' las' in de ladies' cabin an' las' night
up hyuh.... Yass'm, whiles dey listens f'om de b'ileh deck."
"Has my father gone to bed?" asked Ramsey.
"No'm, he up yit. He done met up wid dese sev'l gen'lemen an' find dey
old frien's--callin' deyse'v's in joke Gideon' Ban'--an' he talkin'
steamboats wid 'em----"
The speaker tittered as Ramsey inquiringly extended her arms out forward
and crossed her wrists. "Yass'm," he said, "hin' feet on de front rail,
yass'm."
It seemed but fair that Mrs. Gilmore, to meet the compliment generously,
should sing at the very front of the hurricane roof, just over the
forward guards of the boiler deck. But Ramsey and Hugh kept their place.
Ramsey wanted to be near the sky, she explained, when songs were sung on
the water by moonlight, and eagerly spoke for two or three which her
friend had sung of old on the _Votaress_ to spiritualize the
"acrobatics" of the Brothers Ambrosia.
The singer's voice was rich, trained, and mature, and her repertory a
survival of young days--nights--before curtains and between acts: Burns,
Moore, Byron, and Mrs. Norton, alternating with "The Lavender Girl,"
"Rose of Lucerne," "Dandy Jim o' Caroline," and "O Poor Lucy Neal." And
now she sang her best, in the belief that while she sang the pair up
between her and the pilot-house were speaking conclusively. Let us see.
"Ramsey," said Hugh, and waited--ten seconds--twenty.
Well, why should he not? In eight years and a half there were ten
million times twenty seconds and she had waited all of them. At length
she responded and the moment she did so she thought she had spoken too
promptly although all she said was, "Yes?"
"The hour's come at last," said Hugh.
"What hour?--hour to name that boat?"
"Yes, to name that boat. Only not that first. Ramsey, I've told your
father all I ever wanted to tell you."
"Humph!" The response was so nearly in the manner of the earlier Ramsey,
"the Ramsey he had begun with" and whom she remembered with horror, that
she recognized the likeness. The further reply had been on her tongue's
end, that to tell her father only that could not have taken long, or
some such parrying nonsense; but now it would not come. She felt her
whole nature tempted to make love's final approach steep and slippery,
but again without looking she saw his face; his face of stone; his iron
face with its large, quiet, formidable eyes that could burn with
enterprise in great moments; a face set to all the world's realities,
and eyes that offered them odds, asking none. So seeing she knew that if
she answered with one least note of banter she would make herself an
object of his magnanimity, than which she would almost rather fall under
his scorn--if he ever stooped to scorn. Suddenly she remembered the
deadlock and was smitten with the conviction that these exchanges were
love's last farewell. Now it was hard to speak at all.
"What was it you told him?"
"I told him how long I'd loved you, and why."
"We both love the river so," murmured Ramsey in a voice broken by the
pounding of her heart.
"Yes. I told him that, for one thing. And I told him how gladly I would
have asked for you long ago had I not seen myself, as you so often saw
me on the _Votaress_----"
"Condemned to inaction," she softly prompted; for if this was farewell a
true maiden must speed the parting.
"Yes."
"By an absolute deadlock," she murmured on. "My father sees it. He knows
it's one yet and must always be one."
"No, a lock but not a deadlock. It's a lock to which your brothers do
not hold the key."
The pounding in her breast, which had grown better, grew worse again.
"Who holds it?"
"Your father. I have just told him so. At no time would I have hesitated
to ask for you if the key had been with your brothers. I would have got
a settlement from them, sink or swim, alive or dead. I believe in
lover's rights, Ramsey, and I'll have a lover's rights at any risk or
cost that falls only on me. Those old threats--yes, I know how fiercely
they are still meant--and they have always had their weight; but they've
never of themselves weighed enough to stop me. I've held off and
endured, waiting not for a change of heart in your brothers, but for an
hour counselled, Ramsey, by my father on his dying bed."
"What hour? Hour of strongest right? strongest reason?"
"Not at all. The hour I've waited for was the one which would best
enable me to meet your father on equal terms as measured by his own
standards."
"Oh, I see. I believe I see."
"Yes, the hour when I should be not owner merely, but captain too, of
the finest boat----"
"Dat eveh float'--" she tenderly put in.
"Yes, on this great river."
"Oh, Captain Courteney----"
"Don't Courteney or captain me now, Ramsey, whether this is beginning or
end." There was a silence, and then--
"Hugh," she said, as softly as a female bird trying her mate's song,
"you mustn't ask my father. You mustn't ask any one. I can't let you."
"Your father's already asked. If he consents I go ashore at Natchez,
having telegraphed ahead from Vicksburg----"
"You shan't. You shan't go to my brothers. You shan't go armed and you
shan't go unarmed."
"Yes, I shall. I'll go and settle with them in an hour without the least
fear of violence on either side."
"Armed with nothing but words? You shan't. And armed with anything else
you shan't."
"Ramsey, words are the mightiest weapon on earth. The world's one
perfect man--we needn't be pious to say it--set about to conquer the
human race by the sheer power of words and died rather than use any
other weapon. Died victorious, as he counted victory. And the result--a
poor, lame beginning of the result--is what we call Christendom."
"You shan't die victorious for me."
"No, I shall not. I talk much too vast."
"Humph! you always did." She smiled, but a moonbeam betrayed a tear on
her folded hands.
"True," he admitted. "I talk too vast. I'm only claiming the power of
words in small as well as large. I've no hope of martyrdom; I'm only
confident of victory."
"No matter. You _won't_ go ashore at Natchez."
"You mean your father won't consent?"
"I do. There's one thing, at the very bottom of his heart, that you've
never thought of."
"I think I have."
"What is it?"
"That as the Hayle boats are all one day to be yours, and our union
would unite the two fleets under the one name of Courteney, he will
never allow it."
"He never will."
"Ramsey, he says he may. If we and the boats are so united the fleet
will be, while grandfather lives, the Courteney fleet; but each new boat
from now on will be named for a Hayle, beginning with you, or your
father, or your mother, as you and they may choose. At Vicksburg, if he
consents in time, we can telegraph her--we must have her--to come aboard
at Natchez for the rest of the trip. Grandfather, I suppose you've been
told, is now waiting for us at Vicksburg. He came up on the _Antelope_."
"The _Antelope_! How do you know?"
"By a despatch received at Memphis."
"Mmm! what a blessing is the telegraph! But, ah, Hugh"--the name was
almost naturalized--"this is a mere castle in the air! My--my
brothers----"
"I'll take care of them."
"You can't! You can't! Oh, Hugh, they--keep--their--threats." She caught
a breath and looked at him. If he went seeking them she would go at his
side! He must have read her mind, for in his majestical way he smilingly
shook his head.
Mrs. Gilmore had ceased to sing and with the others had risen and turned
Ramsey's way, confident that up there the conclusive word had been
spoken. Ramsey called down:
"Don't stop. Sing 'My Old Kentucky Home' or that thing in which 'the
river keeps rolling along' and 'the future's but a dream.' We're song
hungry up here."
"Then sing to each other," was the reply. "You can do it."
"Let Captain Hugh sing," said Watson. "He's off watch."
"He says," said Ramsey, "captains don't sing on the texas roof." She
moved to join the group on its way to an after stair. Watson bent his
steps for the pilot-house. At the stair the actor's wife let her husband
and "California" go down before her and as Ramsey and Hugh came close
said covertly:
"Sing, captain. Sing as softly as you please, just for us two while the
world is in dreams and sleep, won't you?"
The lover's heart was big with happiness, his solicitor had just been
singing pointedly in his interest, the seclusion here was all but
absolute, the quoted line was from Ramsey's song of that first night on
the _Votaress_, and to the bright surprise of both his hearers he laid a
touch on Mrs. Gilmore's arm and in a restrained voice so confidential as
to reach only to the pilot-house above and to the two men at the stair's
foot below began to sing.
Before half a line was out the Californian had seized both of Gilmore's
shoulders. "My poem!" he gasped. "I gave it to him last night to
grammatize! He's fit it to a tchune. Partner, he's the only man that's
listened----"
"Sh-sh-sh! listen yourself," whispered the actor, and this is what they
heard:
[Music: O come and grace my gar-den, From all the world a-part. Thou
on-ly may'st the won-der see Of birds and flow'rs that in it be, For all
of them are dreams of thee. My gar-den is my heart,... My gar-den is my
heart.]
"If heaven might make my garden
An empire wide and great,
Fidelity should close it in,
The joy of life bloom evergreen,
And love be law and thou be queen,
Might I but keep the gate.
"For where would be my garden,
Dear love, from thee apart?
Whose every bush and bower and tree,
Its founts, perfumes, and minstrelsy
And all its flowers spring all from thee,
Thou sunlight of my heart."
"You say that's your poem?" murmured the actor.
"Oh, he's doctored it," stealthily admitted the Californian. "He's
doctored it a lot."
LXI
WANTED, HAYLE'S TWINS
Early in the next forenoon another of the Californian's benevolent
schemes threatened to miscarry.
At the settlement of Milliken's Bend there were people already at the
landing, and people running to it from three directions. Yet not a hat,
hand, or handkerchief did they wave until the _Enchantress_, in full
view up toward the head of the bend, was too near to mistake their
salutes for a sign to stop. Then there were wavings aplenty and cries of
acclaim. By the "River News" daily telegraphed down to the New Orleans,
Vicksburg, and other papers, from Louisville, Paducah, Cairo, and like
points, and brought up in those papers by such boats as the _Antelope_,
it had been known here and at every important landing below that this
latest bride of the river was coming and the time of her appearance had
been definitely calculated. And now behold her, a vision of delight, a
winged victory, the finest apparition yet. Up in front of her bell could
be seen Captain Hugh, and who was that beside him, twice his bulk, but
Gideon Hayle!
"Well, well, what's going to happen next?"
No one offered an answer, though the question echoed round.
So early in the season the new wonder carried no cotton, but her lower
deck showed "right smart o' freight," and wherever passengers were wont
to stand stood a crowd looking so content that on the shore one lean and
hungry native with his hands in his trousers to the elbows drawled
sourly as his eye singled out the boiler-deck throng:
"Kin see thah breakfast inside 'em f'om hyuh."
Now they read her name in gold on the front of her pilot-house, now on
its side and splendidly magnified on her wheel-house, and lastly again
on the pilot-house, at its back, as she dwindled away eastward for
Island One-hundred-and-three, called by Ramsey and Watson "My Wife's,"
and now known as Pawpaw Island.
"California" was a general disappointed of his reinforcements. The pair
at Milliken's Bend having failed him, what better hope was there of the
Carthaginians or even of the Vicksburg couple? Yet at Vicksburg, two
hours later, he had joy. For down at the wharf-boat's very edge,
liveliest of all wavers and applauders, with a "Howdy, Cap'm Hugh?"
before the lines were out, and a "How you do, Miss Ramsey?" were the
three pairs at once, foregathered here, they said, "to make the spree
mo' spree-cious," and wild to be the first on the "sta-age plank." Close
after them came Commodore Courteney, and Vicksburg faded into the north.
"Why, Mis' Gilmo'!" said the three pretty wives, sinking with a deft
sweep of their flounced crinoline upon the blue-damask sofas and faintly
teetering on their perfect springs, "why, my deah la-ady, yo' eight an'
a hafe yeahs youngeh!-- Ain't she?-- She certain'y is! An' that deah
Commodo' Co'teney! He's as sweet as eveh!
"But you, Miss Ramsey, oh,--well,--why,--you know,--time an' again we
heard what a mahvel you'd grown to be, but--why,--lemme look at you
again! Why, yo' just divi-i-ine! Law'! I'd give a thousand dollahs just
fo' yo' red-gole hair. Why, it's the golden locks o' Veronese, that
Cap'm Hugh's fatheh showed you,--don't you remembeh?--on the _Vot'ress_,
an' you showed us,--in the sky. They there yet!
"An'"--the five heads drew close together--"Cap'm Hugh, oh, he ain't
such a su'pri-ise; we've seen him f'om time to time. But ain't he--mmm,
hmm, hmmm! An'so a-a-able! Why, Miss Ramsey,--oh, you must 'a' heard
it,--they say excep' fo' yo' pa he hasn't got his equal on the riveh an'
could 'a' been a captain long ago had he 'a' thought best himself. He
certain'y could. But ain't this boat the splendidest thing in the
wi-i-ide, wi-i-ide world? It certain'y is! It's a miracle! an' he her
captain and deservin' to be!
"Mis' Gilmo',--Miss Ramsey,"--the lovely heads came together,--"the's a
hund'ed pretty girls--an' rich as pretty--that ah just cra-a-azy about
him. But they might as well be crazy about a stah. They certain'y might,
an' they--know--why!" (Laughter.) "They certain'y do-- Law'! ain't Miss
Ramsey got the sa-a-ame o-o-ole la-a-afe, on'y sweeteh'n eveh? Sweeteh
an' mo' ketchin'! You certain'y have. No wondeh yo' call' the Belle o'
the Bends. But, all the same, yo' cruel. Yo' fame' fo' yo' cruelty!"
(Laughter.) "They say he's just telegrayphed yo' ma to come aboa'd at
Natchez. That's just ow Southe'n hospitality. But won't that be
fi-i-ine? It certain'y will!"
The three husbands came bringing the actor, the junior pilot, the
Californian, and his confidant of the evening before. Incited by Ramsey
the wives fell into queries on the coming election, rejoicing that even
should Lincoln be made President, and that incredible thing, a war, come
on, the great river and its cities--New Orleans, Natchez, Memphis, and
especially Vicksburg--would be far from the storm. While they made merry
Mrs. Gilmore got Ramsey aside.
"If Captain Hugh's telegraphed, why, then, your father----"
"Oh! my father, he's roaming over the boat somewhere with Commodore
Courteney! I'm going to change this hot dress for a cooler one. I'll be
back before a great while."
"Let me go with you. Are you not well?"
Not well! The girl laughed gayly. But as she drew her friend out upon
the guards and to her stateroom's rear door she talked with a soft
earnestness all the way.
"I don't see how I could have been so blind! If _he_ saw those things
why couldn't I see them? I thought of them, over and over; but always
the other things crowded them back into the dark--and there was plenty
of dark. He's right, my father does hold the key, and if I'd seen things
as I see them now I'd have made the twins give in, somehow, long ago. If
you should see mammy Joy, or Phyllis, or both, please send them to me."
She shut herself in, dropped to the berth's side, and let the tears run
wild. The nurse and the still handsome Phyllis appeared promptly,
together. But they found her full of sparkle; so full that Phyllis saw
under the mask; a mask she herself had worn so often in her youth under
a like desperation.
"Mammy," said her mistress, "want to go somewhere with your baby, about
sundown this evening?"
For explanation the old woman glanced at Phyllis, but Phyllis's eyes
were on Ramsey with a light whose burning carried old Joy's memory back
twenty years. "Sundown?" echoed the nurse to gain time, "yass'm, o'
co'se, ef--but, missie--sundown--dat mean' Natchez. You cayn't be goin'
asho' whah Cap'm Hugh dess tell Phyllis yo' ma comin' aboa'd?"
"Not ashore to stay," was the blithe reply as Phyllis aided the change
of dress. "There'll be two or three of us."
"Well, o' co'se, ef you needs me. Wha' fo' you gwine?"
"To see the twins," sang Ramsey, "if we go at all."
Then Phyllis knew she was trusted, and while with a puzzled frown the
nurse watched her manipulate hooks and eyes she blandly asked: "Miss
Ramsey, if Cap'm Hugh give' me leave kin I go too?"
"Yes, you might ask him. Nobody's going unless he goes."
The light came to old Joy. "Law'! missie, now you a-talkin'! Now you
a-talkin' wisdom! Dah's whah I's wid you, my baby. I's wid you right
dah, pra-a-aise Gawd!"
All three, parting company, were happier for several hours. But the
Californian's were not the only fond schemes, aboard the _Enchantress_,
that could go to wreck.
Nor had "California" met his last disappointment even on this journey.
As he and his reinforcements came out on the boiler deck with a hundred
others from the midday feast the deck-hands below, for quicker unloading
at Canal Street on the morrow, were shifting a lot of sacked corn from
the hold to the forecastle-deck and were timing their work to a chantey.
The song was innocently chosen in reference solely to the piece of river
in which they chanced then to be, but all the more for its innocence it
touched in that gentle knight a chord of sympathy.
"My own true love wuz lost an' found--
O hahd times!--
An' lost ag'in a-comin' round
Hahd Times Ben'.
Found an' lost, lost an' found,
An' lost ag'in a-comin' round
Hahd Times Ben'."[2]
So it ran, while the _Enchantress_ turned southeast with that Lake Saint
Joe of which "'Lindy" was "the pride" lying forest-hidden a few miles
away on the starboard beam. The melody opened with a prolonged wail on
its highest note and bore the tragic quality which so often marked the
songs of slavery. Helped on by names of near-by landmarks--the Big Black
River and the once perilous Grand Gulf--at the bottom of Hard Times
Bend--it played on "California's" mind like summer lightning and seemed
to call to his romantic spirit supernaturally. He could delay no longer
to take his companions into his confidence.
By guess, he said, by inferences, and by modest inquiries he had
discerned that Hugh was going ashore at Natchez to--they understood. All
right, he would go, too, and ordinarily he would be enough. But the
present need was not a fair fight but peace. Hence the propriety of
overwhelming numbers. Wouldn't they like to take a hand?
"But he'll see the twins privately," said the invited.
"Of course, but 'though lost to sight' they'll know we're too close for
them to get away from, and that's a very convincing situation to 'most
any man, even twins."
"Yes, but we can't turn a feud into a fox-hunt. You don't know these
things as we do."
"Don't? Why, my friends, I'm a Kentucky highlander. Might as well say I
don't know the smell of whiskey because I keep sober, when, in my day,
I've been so drunk I've laid on my back and felt up'ards for the
ground."
However, he yielded sweetly. But it was plain to see that he would
certainly, contentedly, go with Hugh alone. Indeed, only this would he
have preferred--that Gideon Hayle might go instead. But one square look
at the big, grim, baffled commander had told him earlier that Hugh's
perilous isolation was wholly acceptable as a final test of his fitness
to belong to Gideon's Band. He parted with his companions and stood at
the front rail taking comfort in the thought that whoever might
disappoint him the twins would not and looking down on the toiling
singers in placid defiance of their lines:
"My true love's heart to mine 'uz boun'--
O hahd times!--
Dey broke dem bindin's comin' roun'
Hahd Times Ben'.
Boun' an' broke, broke an' boun',
An' broke ag'in a-comin' roun'
Hahd Times Ben'."
Watson's partner touched the listener's arm, who smiled and said:
"Only four hours more."
"That's all," replied the pilot. "But I've just thought of something.
Suppose the twins shouldn't be in Natchez."
[Footnote 2: [Music notation]]
LXII
EUTHANASIA
A few steps aside from Hugh and his grandfather at the forward rail of
the hurricane roof, in a glow of autumn twilight, the Gilmores and the
three couples taken on at Vicksburg observed the _Enchantress_, under
Watson's skill, lay her lower guards against the guards of the Natchez
wharf-boat with a touch as light as a human hand.
Down on the wharf-boat, in its double door, as beautiful in her fuller
years as in _Votaress_ days, and more radiant, stood Madame Hayle. A
man-servant at one elbow, a maid at the other, saw the group on the roof
fondly bidding for her smiles, but except one sent earlier to the two
Courteneys they were all for her husband and daughter, who, unseen from
above, awaited her half-way down the main forward stairs. When the maid,
however, leaned to her and spoke, her glance went aloft and her gestures
were a joy even to the strangers who crowded the boat's side. Now while
the stage was run out and her husband met her and gave her his arm, and
white-jackets seized her effects, the man-servant answered a question
softly called over to him by Ramsey, and the group overhead caught his
words:
"De twins couldn' come. No, miss, 'caze dey ain't in town. No, miss, dey
bofe went oveh to de Lou'siana place 'istiddy.... Yass, miss, on a bah
hunt in Bayou Crocodile swamp."
Mrs. Gilmore stole a glance at Hugh, but the only sign that he had heard
was a light nod to the mate below, and a like one up to Watson.
"Take in that stage," called the mate to his men. The engine bells
jingled, the _Enchantress_ backed a moment on one wheel, then went
forward on both, fluttered her skirts of leaping foam, made a wide,
upstream turn, headed down the river, and swept away for Natchez Island
just below and for New Orleans distant a full night's run. She had
hardly put the island on her larboard bow when merrily up and down the
cabin and out on the boiler deck and thence down the passenger guards
rang the supper bell.
"Bayou Crocodile," said a Carthaginian descending the wheel-house stair,
"that's where one of the sons-in-law has his plantation, isn't it?"
"On the Black River, yes," said he of Milliken's Bend.
"Near where it comes into Red River," added Vicksburg.