The weather had been vaguely misting all the dreary morning. Through a
medium not rain, yet scarcely of the tenuity of vapor, Paula had gazed
at the tawny flow of the swift river, the limited perspective of the
banks, the tall looming of the forests, the slate-tinted sky, all dim
and dull like a landscape in outline half smudged in with a stump.
Suddenly this meager expression of the world beyond was withdrawn from
contemplation. In the infinitely dull silence the fall of tentative
drops on the hurricane deck was presently audible, and, all at once,
there gushed forth from the low-hung clouds a tremendous down-pour of
torrents beneath which the _Cherokee Rose_ quivered. Paula turned
quickly to the door of the saloon, which barely closed upon her before
the guards were swept by floods of water.
The whole interior resounded with the beat of scurrying footsteps
fleeing to shelter from this abrupt outbreak of the elements. Squads of
the passengers, or, sometimes, a single fugitive came at intervals
bursting into the saloon, gasping with the effects of surprise, and the
effort at speed, laughing, flushed, agitated, recounting their narrow
escapes from drenching or submergence. Two or three, indeed, had caught
a ducking and were repairing to their staterooms for dry clothing. There
was much sound of activity from the boiler deck as the roustabouts ran
boisterously in and out of the rain, busied in protecting freight or in
sheltering the few head of stock. The whole episode seemed charged with
a cheerful sense of a jolt of the monotony.
A group of gentlemen who did not accompany ladies or who were not
acquainted with those on board gathered in the forward cabin, but Ducie
sat silent and listless in one of the arm-chairs in the saloon.
Apparently, he desired to show the Floyd-Rosneys that he perceived no
cause for embarrassment in their society and had no intention by
withdrawing of ameliorating any awkwardness which his presence might
occasion to them. There were very acceptable and cozy suggestions here.
Hildegarde Dean sat at the piano with the two old soldiers beside her.
The blind Major, who had a sweet tenor voice, albeit hopelessly
attenuated now, some tones in the upper register cracked beyond repair
in this world, would sing _sotto voce_ a stanza of an old war song,
utterly unknown to the girl of the present day, and Hildegarde,
listening attentively, would improvise an accompaniment with refrain and
_ritornello_ in a vague tentative way like one recalling a lost memory.
Suddenly she would throw up her head, her hands would crash out the
confident _tema_, Colonel Kenwynton’s powerful bass tones would boom
forth, and the old blind Major’s tremulous voice would soar on the wings
of his enthusiasm, and his memories of the days of yore. Meantime, the
girl’s fresh young face, between the two old withered masks, would glow,
the impersonation of kindly reverent youth and sweet peace and the
sentiment of harmony.
It was pleasant to listen as song succeeded song. Hildegarde’s mother,
soft-eyed, soft-mannered and graceful, still youthful of aspect, smiled
in her sympathetic accord. Two or three of the more elderly passengers
now and again recognized a strain that brought back a long vanished day.
An old lady had taken out her fancy work and, as she plied her deft
needle in the intricate pattern of the Battenberg, she nodded her head
appreciatively to the rhythm of the music, and looked as if she had no
special desire for her journey’s end or a life beyond the sand-bar.
When the répertoire was exhausted and silence ensued the blank was
presently filled by childish voices and laughter. Marjorie Ashley had
begun to lead little Ned Floyd-Rosney about, introducing him to the
various passengers disposed on the sofas and rocking-chairs of the
saloon. In this scion of the Floyd-Rosney family seemed concentrated all
its geniality. He was a whole-souled citizen and not only accepted
courtesies with jovial urbanity but himself made advances. He had,
indeed, something the tastes of a roisterer, and his father regarded,
with open aversion, his disposition to carouse with his
fellow-passengers. In his arrogant exclusiveness Floyd-Rosney revolted
from the promiscuous attentions lavished on the child. He resented the
intimacy which the affable infant had contracted with Marjorie Ashley,
the two children rejoicing extremely when the old nurse had been
summoned to her breakfast, thus consigning him in the interval to the
care of his mother, and rendering him more accessible to the
blandishments of his new friend. Floyd-Rosney felt that it was not
appropriate that he should be thrust forward in this unseemly publicity
thus scantily attended. It was the habit of the family to travel in
state, with Floyd-Rosney’s valet, the lady’s maid, a French bonne for
the boy, in addition to the old colored nurse in whom Mrs. Floyd-Rosney
had such confidence that she would not transfer the child wholly to
other tendance. The occasion of this journey, however, did not admit of
such a retinue. It was a visit of condolence which they had made to an
aunt of Mr. Floyd-Rosney who had lost her son, formerly a very intimate
friend of his own. She was an aged lady of limited means and a modest
home. To descend upon a household of simple habitudes, already
disorganized by recent illness and death, with a troop of strange
servants to be cared for and accommodated, was manifestly so
inappropriate that even so selfish a man as Floyd-Rosney did not
entertain the idea, although his wife received in his querulous asides
the full benefit of all the displeasure and inconvenience that he
experienced from “having to jaunt about the world with no attendant but
the child’s nurse.” The nurse, “Aunt Dorothy,” as in the southern
fashion she was respectfully called, had, perhaps, found company at
breakfast agreeable to her of her own race and condition, and her
absence was prolonged, which fact gave Marjorie Ashley the opportunity
to make again the round of the group of passengers in the saloon,
cajoling little Ned Floyd-Rosney to show them how he pronounced Miss
Dean’s Christian name. At every smiling effort she would burst into
gurgles of redundant laughter, so funny did “Miff Milzepar’” for “Miss
Hildegarde” sound in her ears. He was conscious of a very humorous
effect as he repeatedly made the attempt to pronounce this long word
under Marjorie’s urgency, gazing up the while with his big blue eyes
brimful of laughter, his carmine tinted lips ajar, showing his two rows
of small white teeth, his pink cheeks continually fluctuating with a
deeper flush, and his beguiling dimples on display. All the ladies and
several of the gentlemen caught him up and kissed him ecstatically; so
enticing a specimen of joyous, sweet-humored, fresh-faced childhood he
presented. His mother’s maternal pride glowed in her smile as she noted
and graciously accepted the tribute, but Floyd-Rosney fumed indignant.
“Why don’t you stop that, Paula?” he growled in her ear as he cast
himself down on the sofa beside her. “All that kissing is dangerous.”
“It has been going on since the beginning of the world, _accelerando_,
as the opportunities multiply,” she retorted with her satiric little
fleer.
“Be pleased to notice that I am serious,” he hissed in his gruff
undertone.
“You can easily make me serious,--don’t over-exert yourself,” she said
with a sub-current of indignation.
She deprecated this public display of his surly mood toward her. There
is no woman, whether cherished or neglected, loving or indifferent,
gifted or deficient, who does not arrogate in public the scepter in her
husband’s affections, who is not wounded to the quick by the slightest
suggestion of reproof, or disparagement, or even the assertion of his
independent sentiment when brought to the notice of others. This is
something that finds, even in the most long-suffering wife, a keen new
nerve to thrill with an undreamed of pain. Paula’s cheek had flushed,
her eyes were hot and excited,--indeed, she did not lift them. She
could not brook the indignity that the coterie, most of all, Adrian
Ducie, should see her husband at her side with a stern and corrugated
brow, whispering in her ear his angry rebukes, commands, comments,--who
could know what he might have to say to her with that furious face and
through his set teeth. The situation was intolerable; her pride groped
for a means of escape.
Then she did a thing that she felt afterward she could never have done
had she not in that moment unconsciously ceased to love her husband. She
shielded him no more as heretofore. She did not sacrifice herself, as
was her custom in a thousand small preferences. She did not assume his
whim that he might be satisfied, yet incur no responsibility or
ridicule. On the contrary, she led the laugh,--she delivered him, bound
hand and foot, to the scoffer.
She suddenly rose, and, with her graceful, willowy gait, walked
conspicuously down the middle of the saloon. “Ladies and gentlemen,
fellow travelers and companions in misery,” she said, swaying forward in
an exaggerated bow, “the heir to the throne must not be kissed. Mr.
Floyd-Rosney is a victim of the theory of osculatory microbes. You can
only be permitted to taste how sweet the baby is through his honeyed
words and his dulcet laughter. Why, he might catch a tobacco-bug from
these human smoke-stacks, or the chewing-gum habit from Marjorie Ashley.
Therefore, you had better turn him over to me and the same old germs he
is accustomed to when his muzzer eats him up.”
Forthwith she swung the big child up lightly in her, slender arms and,
with gurgles of laughter, devoured him with her lips, while he
squealed, and hugged, and kicked, and vigorously returned the kisses.
Then she held him head downward, with his curls dangling and apparently
all the blood in his body surging through the surcharged veins of his
red face as he screamed in delight.
“Why, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,” said the wondering Marjorie volubly,
“everybody on the boat has been kissing Ned ever since he came aboard.
The mate says he is so sweet that he took Ned’s finger to stir his
coffee with and declared it needed no other sweetening, either long or
short. And little Ned believed him and sat on his knee while he ate his
breakfast waiting to stir his second cup for him. Ned has got a whole
heap of microbes if kissing gives ’em. Why, even that big deer-hound
that is freighted to Vicksburg and has been sitting the picture of
despair and home-sickness, refusing to eat,--dog-biscuit, or meat, or
anything,--just tumbled little Ned over on the deck and licked his face
from his hair to his chin. And when he let Ned up at last Ned just
hugged the dog, and they kissed each other smack in the mouth. Then they
raced up and down the deck among the freight, playing hide and seek till
little Ned could hardly stir. Then the deer-hound ate his breakfast, and
is sitting down there right now, begging the leadsman for more.”
“Oh, well, then, let him go to his nurse and get his mouth washed out
with a solution of carbolic acid or some other anti-toxin,--perhaps that
may be a staggerer for the microbes.”
She let the child slide to the floor and then followed the tousled
little figure as it sped in a swift trot to her stateroom. He paused for
her to turn the bolt of the door, and as it opened he slipped under her
arm and disappeared, microbe-laden, within.
Her husband sat silent, dismayed, amazed, scarcely able to believe his
senses. He was of the type of human being who, subtly and especially
fitted to cause pain, was not himself adjusted to stoical suffering. He
had a thousand sensitive fibers. His pride burned within him like an
actual fire. While it was appropriate that in public appearances a wife
should seem to be the predominant consideration, there being more grace
in a deferential affectation than in a sultan-like swagger, this pose
had such scant reality in the domestic economy that when Paula presumed
upon it in this radical nonchalance, he was at once astounded,
humiliated, and deeply wounded. He found it difficult to understand so
strange a departure from her habitual attitude toward him, his
relegation to the satiric methods with which she favored the world at
large, the merciless exposure to ridicule of his remonstrance, which
was, indeed, rather the vent of fretful ill-humor than any genuine
objection or fear of infection. The least exertion of feminine tact in
response to his wish would have quietly spirited the child away and
without comment ended these repugnant caresses of the little fellow by
strangers. Floyd-Rosney began to experience a growing conviction that it
all was the influence of the presence of Ducie. He had had some queer,
not unrelished, yet averse interest in studying in another man the face
of the lover whom he had supplanted. He could scarcely have brooked the
sight of the man she had loved, to tranquilly mark his facial traits, to
appraise his mental development, to speculate on his social culture and
worldly opportunities. But this was merely his image. Here was his twin
brother, his faithful facsimile. Floyd-Rosney had been surprised to note
how handsome he was, how obviously intelligent, how dashing. He had been
flattered as well,--this was no slight mark of honest preference on the
part of Paula, no mean rival he had put aside. He had felt a glow of
added pride in the fact, an accession of affection. He had noted the
studied calm, the inexpressive pose, the haughty simulation of
indifference with which Ducie had sustained the awkward _contretemps_ of
their meeting, the strain upon _savoir faire_ which the conventions
imposed upon the incident.
And now, as he met Ducie’s eyes again, he perceived elation in them,
disproportionate, futile, but delighted. It was the most trivial of
foolish trifles, Floyd-Rosney said to himself, but this man had seen him
set at naught, put to the blush, held up to ridicule by his wife, airily
satiric, utterly unmindful of his dignity, nay, despising its tenuity,
and leading the laugh at his discomfiture.
Ducie caught himself with difficulty. He was so conscious of the
unguarded expression of his face, the look of relish, of triumph, of
contempt surprised in his eyes, that he made haste to nullify the
effect. The whole affair was the absent Randal’s, and he must take heed
that he did not interfere by word or look or in any subtle wise in what
did not concern him,--it was, indeed, of more complicated intent than
heretofore he was aware. He was a man of very definite tact but he had
hardly realized the extent of the endowment until that moment. He
appreciated the subtle value of his own impulse, as if it had been
another’s, when he said, directly addressing Floyd-Rosney, as if there
had been only the element of good-natured joviality in the episode, “I
think we are all likely to encounter dangers more formidable than
microbes.--Have you any experience of cloud-bursts, Mr. Floyd-Rosney?
This fall of water is something prodigious, to my mind.”
In his personal absorptions Floyd-Rosney had not noticed the rain. “Is
it more than a ‘season,’ do you think?--the breaking up of this long
drought?” Floyd-Rosney quickly adopted the incidental tone.
He was so essentially a proud man that he would fain think well of
himself. His credulity expanded eagerly to the hope that to others the
episode of the morning might seem, as apparently to this man, only a bit
of gay badinage, the feminine insolence of a much indulged wife to her
lenient lord and master. To himself it could not bear this
interpretation, nor to her. He could never forget nor forgive the
impulse that informed it. But he was quick to seize the opportunity to
reinstate his self-possession, nay, the only possibility to “save his
face” and hold up his head. Such demands his assuming dignity made on
the deference of all about him that taken in this wise the incident
could hardly appear serious.
“If there were thunder and lightning it might seem the equinoctial,”
said Ducie, “although it is something late in the year.”
They had walked together down the saloon and to the forward part of the
cabin where they stood at the curving glass front looking out on
vacancy. The rain fell, not in torrents now, but in unbroken sheets of
gray crystal, opaque and veined with white. As the water struck the
guards it rebounded with the force of the downfall in white foam more
than a foot high, while sweeping away over the edge with the impetus and
volume of a cataract. But for the list of the boat, for the _Cherokee
Rose_ had not grounded fair and square on the sand-bar, this flood would
have been surging through the saloon, but the rain drove with the gusts
and, the windward side being several inches lower than the other, the
downpour struck upon it and recoiled from the slant. The sound was
something tremendous; the savagery of the roar of the columns of rain
falling upon the roof was portentous, sinister, expressive of the
unreasoning rage of the tempestuous elements and of the helplessness of
human nature to cope with it. Suddenly, whether the turmoil had in some
sort abated, or alien sounds were more insistently apparent, a new
clamor was in the air,--a metallic clanking, repetitious, constantly
loudening, was perceptible from the lower deck. Then ensued a deep,
long-drawn susurrus. The engines were astir once more. Obviously, an
effort was in progress to get the _Cherokee Rose_ off the bar under her
own steam. A babel of joyous, excited comment in the saloon, at the
extreme pitch of the human voice, could hardly be heard in the midst of
the turmoil without. All agreed that a vast flood must have fallen to
raise the river sufficiently to justify the attempt.
“We are below the junction of several tributaries in this vicinity that
bring down a million tuns a minute in such weather as this,” commented
one of the passengers.
Another, of the type that must have information at first hand, rushed to
the door to secure a conference with the Captain, regardless, or,
perhaps, unconscious, of the remonstrance of the others. As the door
opened in his hand a torrent of water rushed in, traversing the length
of the saloon over the red velvet carpet, and a blast of the wind
promptly knocked him off his feet, throwing him across the cabin against
a huddle of overturned chairs. The other men, with one accord, sprang
forward, and it was only with the united strength of half a dozen that
the door could be forced to close, although its lock seemed scarcely
able to hold it against the pressure from without. For the wind had
redoubled its fury. This region is the lair of the hurricane, and there
was a prophetic anxiety in every eye.
It is, indeed, well that these great elemental catastrophes are as
transient as terrible. Human nerves could scarcely sustain beyond the
space of a minute the frightful tumult that presently filled the air.
The wind shrilled with a keen sibilance, and shouted in riotous menace
that seemed to strike against the zenith and rebound and reëcho anew.
The sense of its speed was appalling. The thunderous crashing of the
forests on the river bank told of the riving of timber and the
up-rooting of great trees laid flat in the narrow path of the hurricane.
For in the limitations of the track lies the one hope of escape from
this sudden frenzy of the air. Its area of destruction may be fifty
miles in length, but is often only a hundred yards or so in width, cut
as straight as a road and as regular, when this awful, invisible foe
marches through the country. Perhaps this was the thought in the mind
of every man of the little coterie, the chance that the _Cherokee Rose_
might be outside the path of the hurricane. The next moment a hollow
reverberation of an indescribably wide and blaring sound broke forth
close at hand, as the smoke-stacks of the _Cherokee Rose_ crashed down
on the texas and rolled thence on the hurricane deck, the guy wires
jangling loose and shivering in keen, metallic tones. The boat yawed
over, suddenly smitten, as it were, by one fierce stroke. The furniture,
the passengers, all were swept down the inclined plane of the floor of
the saloon and against the mirrored doors of the staterooms. An aghast
muteness reigned for one moment of surprise and terror. Then cries broke
forth and futile and frantic efforts were made to reach the upper
portion of the cabin. A wild alarm was heard that the boat was on
fire,--that the boat had slipped off the sand-bar and was sinking.
Reiterated shouts arose for the officers, the Captain, the clerks, the
pilot, the mate, and the tumult without was reflected by the confusion
and terror within.
Ducie’s brain seemed awhirl at the moment of the disaster. As he
regained his mental poise he saw Mrs. Floyd-Rosney on her knees
frantically struggling with the door of her stateroom, the lock
evidently having somehow sprung in the contortions of the steamer under
the blast. She looked up at him for an instant, but her tongue was
obviously incapable of framing a word in the excitement of that
tempestuous crisis. Ducie suddenly remembered, what everyone else but
the mother had forgotten, that the little boy had scarcely five minutes
earlier gone to the stateroom to be dealt with for the kissing
microbes. Observing the inadequacy of her efforts Ducie rushed to her
assistance and sought, by main strength, to force open the twisted and
warped door. It was so difficult to effect an entrance that he began to
doubt if this could be done without an axe, when he succeeded in
splintering it a trifle where it had already showed signs of having
sustained a fracture. Into the aperture thus made he thrust his foot and
then wedged in his knee, finally shattering a panel from the frame, to
the horror of the prisoners within, whose voices of terror found an echo
in Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s anguished exclamations.
Ducie triumphantly lifted out little Ned and then the old colored nurse
was dragged through the aperture, scarcely sufficient for the transit.
“There you are, good as new,” cried Ducie genially.
Some of the doors of the staterooms had burst from their fastenings, and
were sagging and swaying inward, offering pitfalls for the unwary, and,
in that wild and excited group, Ducie alone bethought himself of
precaution. “Look out for the boy, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,--he may fall
through one of those open doors into deep water or into the furnace,--I
don’t know what is now beneath this part of the saloon,--the boat seems
twisted and broken to pieces.”
The suggestion of danger to the child was like a potent elixir to Paula.
Her eyes, strained and set, recovered their normal look of perception,
wild and haggard though they were. She caught the child in her arms and,
although trembling and occasionally staggering under his weight, she
would not relinquish him to Ducie as he desired, but carried him
herself safely along the precarious way. Ducie aided her to clamber up
the steep incline where the doors ceased and the wall was unbroken,
there being here the barber-shop and the office, and the large space
utilized as a smoking-room. Through the windows streamed a deluge of
rain, and broken glass lay scattered all about.
Most of the passengers had gathered here in an attitude of tense
expectancy. A man stood at a speaking-tube and, with a lordly urgency,
was insisting that the Captain should take immediate measures to put the
passengers ashore in the yawl. It was no moment to relish a conspicuous
pose, and Floyd-Rosney was too well habituated to the first place to
give it undue value, but he was obviously in his element and carrying
all before him. It was a one-sided conversation, but the comprehension
of his listeners was quickened by their personal interest in its
progress and result.
“No danger?” a sarcastic laugh. “We take the liberty of differing as to
that. The boat may go to pieces on the sand-bar.”
“A shelter? yes,--as long as she lasts, but how long will that be? The
boat not much injured except in the furnishings and glass? You think
not?” very sarcastically.
“Oh, you guarantee? Now what is your guaranty worth to people drowned in
one hundred feet of water?”
“No, we won’t wait to be taken off by the next packet. The river is
rising, and the sand-bar might be covered. We demand it,--the passengers
_demand_ to be set ashore in the yawl.”
“Well, then, we will hold you and the owners liable.”
“We are not prisoners. What’s that? Responsibility? humanity?--shelter?
I’ll take care of the shelter. Duciehurst mansion is scarcely ten miles
down the river. I own it, and the yawl could put us in it in a trice.”
“Yes,--we will risk it,--we will risk the wind and the current. _All_
right. All _right_.”
He had carried his point against every protest according to his wont. As
he turned, triumphant and smiling, to the anxious, disheveled, drenched
group, he had all the pomp and port of a public benefactor. Absorbed in
himself and the prospect of his speedy extrication from this
uncomfortable and dangerous plight he was utterly unaware that his wife
and only child had had urgent need of the succor that they had received
from a stranger.
Paula gazed enlightened at Floyd-Rosney as if she saw him for the first
time as he was. The scales had fallen from her eyes. His glance met
hers. He had no sense of gratulation that she and the boy were safe. He
had not known they had encountered special danger. He thought they only
shared the general menace which it was his privilege to render less, to
annul. He objected to her pose with the boy in her arms. He deemed it
inelegant,--as little Ned was much too stalwart for the artistic
presentment of the babe in the bosom of graceful maternity,--and the
backward cant of her figure thus extremely plebeian. It was not this
personal disapproval, however, that informed the coldness in his eyes.
The incident of the ridicule to which she had subjected him among these
passengers still rankled in every pulsation. He was glad of the
opportunity to confer benefits upon them, from his high position to
rescue them from imminent danger, to be reinstated, in their opinion, as
a man of paramount influence and value,--a fleer at him should be
esteemed, indeed, a self-confessed folly.
“I dare say the old house leaks like a riddle,--I know it is in ruins,”
he said, in a large, off-hand, liberal manner, “but it is on solid
ground, at any rate, and I shall be glad to entertain this worshipful
company there as best I may till we can get a boat that can navigate
water and not tow-heads. I know we can’t spend the night here. In fact,
the Captain proposes to set us ashore as soon as he is convinced that no
boat is coming down,--but, of course, every craft on the river is tied
up in such weather as this. If he will set us ashore at Duciehurst with
some bedding and provisions I will ask no more.”
There was a murmur of acquiescence and acceptance,--then a general
acclaim of thanks, for the wind was still so high that communication was
conducted almost in shouts. Nevertheless, Ducie heard very distinctly
when Mrs. Floyd-Rosney turned toward him a pale, pained, troubled face.
“You will come, too? You will have no scruple about--about the
ownership?” she faltered.
Adrian Ducie laughed satirically. “Not the least scruple in the world. I
have the best right there from every point of view,--even his own!--for
if my brother is only a lessee, and not the rightful owner, as he
contended this morning, Randal is in possession and my welcome is
assured in a house of which he is the host.”
“I only thought--I wanted to say----”
The big child was very big in her arms, and had had his share of the
suffering from the general tumult and excitement. He was fractious,
hungry, and sleepy, although he could not sleep. But he burrowed with
his head in her neck and tried to put his cheek before her lips that she
might talk to no one but him, and began to cry, although he forgot his
grievance midway and attempted to get down on his own stout legs.
“I wanted to say,--you have been so good to me and the baby,--don’t Ned,
be quiet, my pet,--that I could not bear for you to remain in danger or
discomfort on the boat because of any sensitiveness about our presence
at Duciehurst.”
“Don’t you believe it,” he responded cavalierly. “I am not subject to
any sensitiveness about Duciehurst. I shall have the very best that
Duciehurst can afford and be beholden to nobody for it.”