Chapter 20

"Why--I can. I think they're pretty tol'able wonderful. But so's he--to let 'em do it. Now, this ain't the question, either, but--why does he allow it? It ain't for lack of pluck, senator. I know a coward's earmarks and he ain't got 'em. It ain't for religion; less'n two hours out of Orleans he'd offered them twins, I'm told, to take 'em down to the freight deck and dish up the brace of 'em at one fell scoop. And no more is it because his people won't let him alone to do his own way. He's about the let-alone-dest fellow I ever see, for his age, if he is any particular age. No, sir, I've studied out what it's for."

"Hmm. But what's your question? What's _it_ about?"

"Why, it's about this--and your friend the general. For I'll tell you, senator, why Mr. Hugh don't fight. It's for--can I tell you in confidence, strict, air-tight?"

"Certainly, strict, air-tight."

"Well, then, it's for love. He's in love with their sister. Now, _that's_ something I _don't_ wonder at. I am, too. So are a lot of us." He smiled at the cub, who frowned away. "Now, by natural fitness, he's got ground for hope. I ain't got a square inch. She ain't on my claim. Next week my face'll be to the setting sun. So what do I do but go to him--this was before her young brother died--which I almost loved the brother too--and s'I, 'Mr. Courteney, I've saw the sun go down and moon come up on this thing three times running, and every time and all between I've stood it, seeing you stand it. And I've studied it. And I see your fix. But most of us don't; so somebody's got to indorse you. Now, being a Kentuckian, not blue-grass but next door, I feel like doing it. You've _got_ to play two hands and you _can't_ play but one. Well, I'll play the one you can't. I'll fight them twins.'"

"Well, of all--and he accepted?"

"Now, you know he didn't. He said it would be absolutely impossible. But he said it the funniest way--! It made me see the size of him for the first time. And, senator, he's life-size. But I reckon you knowed that before I did. He took me by the button-hole, just as I'm holding you now, and talked to me as majestic as a father sending his boy off to school, and at the very same time and in the very same words as sweet as a girl sending her soldier to war."

"And he convinced you?"

"No, we was interrupted and couldn't talk it out. Well, I can't go back to him and resume, no more'n a wildcat bank. For one thing, I wouldn't take him from her."

"You don't mean they're together now?"

"Now, no, but by spells, yes. Bound to happen--so many of us so willing. I'd try to talk the thing out with this young man and Mr. Watson, but they all feel alike. Reckon it does 'em credit, but--well--I'd like to talk it out with you and the general. I think we can dispense with the boat's consent. Don't you?"

"Oh, Lord, man, what have I got to do with that?"

"Hold your horses, senator. I look at it this way: If the twins hadn't been too busy pecking at Mr. Hugh I'm just the sort o' man they'd 'a' pecked at, and hence I have a good moral right to waive their not doing it and take the will for the deed."

"Nonsense, my good friend; good joke, nothing more."

"Hold on; there's this anyhow: If Mr. Hugh _could_ accept their invitation maybe he'd take me for his second; and what does second mean if it don't mean that if, after all, something should force him to drop out I could drop in?"

"Oh," laughed the senator, freeing his buttonhole by gentle force and edging away, "very well; but the twins! They're out! Look at _their_ fix; _they_ can't fight now."

"Senator, just so. But the general, all along he's sort o' been their second; indorsed for 'em same's I'd like to for Mr. Hugh. He'd be their second now if they could fight--as we know they'd be glad to. So, why ain't he honor bound to take their place if I take Mr. Hugh's? This young gentleman'll act for me--won't you?--yes, and the senator can act for the general. Then, senator, the first time we can get ashore we can settle the whole thing without involving Mr. Hugh and without ever letting the ladies know--or the crowd either--that it ain't just our own affair. I can easily give the general cause, you know."

"My friend," said the cunning senator, who knew his ruling sin was tardiness and that he was tardy now, "I don't say anything could be fairer--in its right time. If you'll go to bed and to sleep----"

"Senator, delays are dangerous. I might get the cholera. The general might get it. Or some other trouble might crop up and sort o' separate us."

Ah! It flashed into the senator's mind that California, though meaning all he said, had in full view the Gilmore-Harriet affair and that this was a move in that, a move to checkmate. His countermove had to be prompt; some one was coming up the nearest steps. "My dear sir, there _is_ another trouble; serious, imminent, and almost sure to involve our friend Hugh in a vital mistake--Why, general, I thought you, at least, was asleep."

"Sss-enator, I was. I mmm-erely had not und-ressed. Have you fff-ound that young man?"

"Not yet, general. Let's go see him together. I want to see you, too, for just a moment, if these gentlemen will excuse me that long."

"Mr. Hugh's with the first clerk, yonder by the bell," said the gold hunter. "We'll wait here, eh?"

The general wanted to reply, but "I wish you would," responded the senator and hurried him away.

XLIX

KANGAROO POINT

Aboard the _Votaress_ was a gentle, retiring lady, large and fair, whom both Hugh and Ramsey had liked from the first, yet whose acquaintance they had made very slowly and quite separately. She was a parson's wife, who had never seen a play, a game of cards, or a ball, danced a dance, read a novel, tasted wine, or worn a jewel. She had four handsome, decorous, well-freckled children, two boys, two girls.

At table, until the married pairs of Vicksburg, Yazoo, and Milliken's Bend had gone ashore, she had not sat with the foremost dozen, although she and the bishop spoke often together and were always "sister" and "brother." Her near neighbors at the board had been the Carthaginians and Napoleonites, and it was through them that she had met the Gilmores. To Ramsey and Hugh she had been made known by her children, one boy and girl having fallen wildly in love with the young lady's red curls, and the other two with Hugh and his frown.

The Gilmores' hearts she had won largely by the way in which her talks with them revealed the sweet charities of a soul unwarped by the tyrannous prohibitions under which she had been "born and raised" and to which she was still loyal; and she had crowned the conquest by a gentle, inflexible refusal to "brother" John the Baptist. In their lively minds she reawakened the age-old issue between artist and pietist. Said the amused Gilmore:

"Humiliate me? Not in the least. She only humbles me; she's such a beautiful example of----"

"Yes, but, goodness, don't say it here!" said his wife. "Harriet" and the exhorter were already trouble enough.

Nevertheless, "What lovely types of character," insisted Gilmore, "come often, _so_ often, from ugly types of faith!"

The wife flinched and looked about but he persisted: "So much better, my love--this is only my humble tribute to her--so _much_ better is religion, even her religion, without the liberal arts than the liberal arts without religion. Faith is the foundation, they are the upper works."

"Dear, you should have been a preacher!"

"No, I'd always be preaching that one sermon. If I didn't tell it to you, I'd have to tell it to her, or make you tell her."

Mrs. Gilmore had not told her, but between the two women, across the gulf between them, there had grown such a commerce of silent esteem that neither Hugh nor Ramsey knew which one's modest liberalism to admire most. To Ramsey it was nothing against the matron that she was not nursing the immigrant sick. Only Madame Hayle was allowed to do that, and the parson's wife, being quite without madame's art of doing as she pleased, had had to submit conscience and compassions to the captain's forbiddal, repeated by the commodore and Hugh. But after the play she had insisted, "strict orders or none, and whether her children were four or forty-four," on entering the service of the busy Gilmores, "no matter how," and was now, with old Joy, in the pilot-house, a most timely successor to the actor's wife in the social care of Ramsey.

For to Ramsey, in this first bereavement of her life, sleep was as abhorrent as if her brother's burial were already at hand. Grief was good, for grief was love. Sleep was heartlessness. Moreover, in sleep, only in sleep, there was no growth. Of course, that was not true; only yesterday and the day before she had grown consciously between evening and morning, grown wonderfully. But she had forgotten that and in every fibre of her being felt a frenzy for growth, for getting on, like the frenzy of a bird left behind by the flock. All the boat's human life, all its majestic going--led on by the stars--and especially all those by whose command or guidance it went, made for growth. So, too, did this dear Mrs. So-and-so, who could so kindly understand how one in deep sorrow may go on seeing the drollery of things. Grief, love, solace, growth, she was all of them in one. If she, Ramsey, might neither nurse the sick with her mother nor watch with Mrs. Gilmore and "Harriet," here was this dear, fair lady with the tenderest, most enlightening words of faith and comfort that ever had fallen on her ears; words never too eager or too many, but always just in time and volume to satisfy grief's fitful questionings.

For refuge they had tried every quarter of these upper decks; now paced them, now stood, now sat, and had found each best in its turn; but such open-air seclusion itself drew notice, made notice more felt, and so the dusk of the pilot-house had soon been found best of all. It remained so now--while the great chimneys out forward breathed soothingly, and a mile astern glimmered the _Westwood_, and a mile ahead glimmered the _Antelope_, and here among the few occupants of the visitors' bench there drifted a soft, alluring gossip about each newly turned bend of the most marvellous of rivers. To nestle back in its larboard corner while now some one came up and in and now some one slipped down and out, and while ever the pilot's head and shoulders and the upper spokes of his vigilant wheel stood outlined against the twinkling sky and rippling air, was like resting one's head on the _Votaress's_ bosom.

And yet another reason made sleep unthinkable. He who had said, "I need you," was awake, was on watch. Now that the feud, blessed thought, was all off, sworn off, and a lingering mistrust of the twins seemed quite unsisterly, probably that need of her, or illusion of need, had passed. Well, if so he ought to say so! For here were great cares and dangers yet. The river was out of all its bounds. Most of those bounds themselves and the great plantations behind them were under the swirling deluge. The waters of Scrubgrass Bend, for instance, were crosscutting over Scrubgrass Towhead in one league-wide sheet, and Islands Seventy-this-and-that and Islands Sixty-that-and-this were under them to their tree-tops. These things might be less fearful in fact than in show, or might be a matter wherein it was only a trifle more imbecile to think of her helping than in some others. Yet here were officers and servants of the boat busy out of turn and omitting routine duties unfortunate to omit and which she might perform if they would but let her. She noticed the presence of both pilots at once--Watson at the wheel, Ned on the bench. No wonder, with so awesome a charge; guiding a boat like this, teeming with human souls and driven pell-mell through such a war of elemental forces in desert darkness, with never a beacon light from point to point, from hour to hour; running every chute, with a chute behind nearly every point or island, and the vast bends looping on each other like the folds of a python and but little more to be trusted.

And here was this "Harriet" affair, a care and danger that as yet smouldered, but at any moment, with or without aid of the twins, might blaze. No one mentioned it, but you could smell it like smoke. And here was that supreme care and danger, the plague, with all the earlier precautions against it dropped, and with its constant triple question: Who next of the sick? Who next of the well? Who next on either of the decks below?

Two or three times Hugh came, sat awhile, spoke rarely, and went out. What a spontaneous new deference every one accorded him and with what a simple air of habitude he received it, though it seemed to mark him for bereavement as well as for command! Why did he come? Why did he go? wondered Ramsey. Not that she would hinder him, coming or going. She could not guess that one chief object was care of her. She could only recall how lately they two had stood behind the footlights and sung their nonsense rhymes, partners in, and justified by, one brave, merciful purpose. Ought he to let care, danger, and grief, as soon as they had become acutely hers and his, drive him and her apart and strike him dumb to her, as dumb as a big ship dropping her on a desert shore and sailing away? Various subtleties of manner in others on the bench convinced her that they were thinking of him and her and thinking these same questions. What right had he to bring that upon her? Once, as he went out, somebody unwittingly stung her keenly by remarking, to no one in particular, that it was hard to see what should keep him so busy.

"D'you know," retorted Ned, "what running a boat is?"

"Why, yes, it's making things spin so smooth you can't see 'em spin, ain't it?"

"Right. Ever fly a kite? Not with yo' eyes shet, hey? Well, a boat's a hundred kites. Ain't she, Watsy?"

"Two hundred," said Watson, at the wheel.

"But Mr. Hugh ain't actually running this boat, is he?"

"I ain't said he wuz," replied Ned, and----

"He ain't a-runnin' no other," said Watson.

For an instant Ramsey was all pride for him they exalted; but in the next instant a wave of resentment went through her as if their vaunting were his; as if her pride were his own confessed, colossal vanity; as if the price of his uplift were her belittlement. Never mind, he should pay! Absurd, absurd; but she was harrowingly tired, lonely, idle, grief-burdened, and desolate, and absurdity itself was relief. He should pay, let his paying cost her double. Somehow, in some feminine, minute, pinhole way, she would deflate him, wing him, bring him down, before he should soar another round. With old Joy at her feet, in the dusk of her corner beyond Mrs. So-and-so, the parson's wife; she allowed herself a poor, bitter-sweet smile.

Each time when Hugh had come back to the bench, room had been hurriedly made for him next the parson's wife--"stabboard side"--who, speaking for all, promptly began to interrogate him, her first question always being as to his father's condition, which did not improve. Making room on the bench made room in the conversation--decoying pauses hopefully designed to lure him into saying something, anything, to Ramsey, or her to him; but always the kind trap had gone unsprung. Two or three times, obviously, Mrs. So-and-so's inquiries had first been Ramsey's to her; as when one of them elicited the fact that the next turn would be Horseshoe Cut-off and Kangaroo Point; and once, at length, after twice failing to believe the ear she bent to Ramsey's murmur, she said audibly:

"Ask him, dear; ask him yourself."

Every one waited and presently Hugh remarked:

"I'll answer if I can."

"I'd rather," faltered Ramsey, "ask John the Baptist."

The unlucky mention took no evident effect on any one. If that was the snub she would have to try again.

"I can ask him for you," said Hugh. "He's up, expecting to leave us at Helena."

"No, thank you," she sighed, "you're too awfully busy. It won't make any real difference if I never find out."

"Won't sink the boat to ask," drawled Watson; but she remained silent till Hugh inquired:

"Are you sure I can't tell you?"

"Oh, you can!" came from Ramsey's dark corner. "But--with the whole boat in your care--we oughtn't to ask you things we don't have to know."

"Lard! belch it out," urged the innocent Ned, taking her in earnest; but again she was silent.

"Well?" said Hugh.

"Oh, well, are there many--? Oh, it ain't important."

"Why, missy," muttered old Joy, "you's dess natchiully bleeds to ax it now."

"Yes, dear," said the parson's wife, "let's have it."

"Well--are there many--? Oh, it's not--are there--are there many kangaroos on Kangaroo Point?"

At any outer edge of civilization a joke may be as hard and practical as ship's bread, yet pass. Amid the general mirth and while Hugh pulled a bell cord which made no jingle down in the engine-room and had never before been observed by Ramsey, his reply was prompt and brief but too gently solemn for her ear; and when she got Mrs. So-and-so to repeat it to her it was merely to the effect that, though kangaroos were few on Kangaroo Point, she ought to see the wealth of horseshoes in Horseshoe Cut-off.

Oh, kind answer! that excused her frivolity by sharing it. Kind beyond her utmost merit. She did not say so, but she thought it, sitting dumb, in sudden tears, and burning with shame for her blindness to the hour's fearful realities. While Ned stepped to Watson's side to speak critically of the _Antelope_, now shining on their starboard bow, Hugh, near the door, dropped a quiet request to the two or three other occupants of the bench and they followed him out.

"Why do they go?" she asked, fancying them as much appalled at her as she herself was, and when the sweet lady could not enlighten her the pilots offered a guess that two had gone to relieve Mrs. Gilmore and her maid and that Hugh would presently join the first clerk by the bell.

"There he is now," said Ned, actually expecting her to rise and look down. But she sat still and watched the _Antelope_, wishing her far better speed in view of the letters she carried. So came thoughts of the long telegraphic despatch to her father which Hugh must by this time have written for her mother, as agreed between them, and which was to be sent, in the morning, from Memphis.

The door opened and Mrs. Gilmore and "Harriet" came in.

"Well," softly inquired the actor's wife, "how do we come on?" and Ramsey answered as softly, yet taking pains that Ned and Watson should overhear:

"I've disgraced myself."

"Mmm!" mumbled old Joy in corroboration.

"What have you done now?"

"Nothing. I don't _do_ anything. Only said something, something so silly I can't even apologize."

"To whom?"

"The baby elephant," said Ramsey and laughed a note or two. The door opened again and Hugh's bell call was explained by the entrance of the texas tender and another white-jacket, each bearing a large tray of cups and plates, hot coffee, and hot toasted rolls and butter. She hadn't dreamed she was so hungry.

Watson stared back from the wheel with grim pretence of surprise. "Who sent that here?"

"Mr. Hugh Co'teney sawnt it, suh," said the tender, arranging the cups on the bench. "Yass'm," he repeated to the grateful ladies, "Mr. Hugh, yass'm."

"Oh! Mr. Hugh," replied Watson. "He must 'a' gave you the order before he come up here this last time."

"Yass, suh, but say don't fetch it tell he ring."

"Six cups," counted the pilot, "six--You go down with Miss Hayle's compliments to Mr. Courteney, and----"

"No-o-o-o!" sang Ramsey, running up the scale.

But Watson was firm. "Boy, you heard me, didn't you?"

Ned, with his eyes down on the bell, interposed: "Hold on, Wats', three into one you can't. Hugh's in a confab with the senator and the general."

Ramsey, eating like a hunter come home, suddenly stood. "Now look, everybody, at the _Antelope_. She's right abeam. Ain't she abeam, Mr. Watson?"

Watson drawled that she wasn't anything else, and Ramsey failed to see that he saw her cast an anxious glance down to the bell and the captain's chair beyond it.

L

"DELTA WILL DO"

In Horseshoe Cut-off the course was east. When Ned directed Ramsey's sight to its upper end, where the flood came into view from the north, she feared he would name the point it turned; but he forbore and she gazed on the thin old moon off in the southeast.

"Make out yan bunch o' sycamores?" was his nearest venture. The sycamores were on the point. Across the river where it ran concealed beyond those sycamores--he went on to tell--at the up-stream end of a low pencil stroke of forest between the head of the cut-off and the eastern stars, was another turn, Friar's Point. But her interest in points had faded, and whether friars abounded on that one or not she took pains not to inquire.

Instead, she was about to ask the cause of a strange silvering in the sky close over the black pencil stroke, when, as on Sunday, the morning star sprang into view and cast its tremulous beam on the waters. She gazed on the white splendor as genuinely enthralled as ever, though at the same time her eye easily, eagerly took in the first clerk, the senator, the general, and Hugh, standing about the captain's empty chair. They loomed as dimly as the sycamores, yet when a fifth figure drew near them she knew by his fine gait that it was the actor, relieved from the captain's sick-room by "California" and the cub pilot. A gesture from Hugh stopped him some yards off and he stood leaning on the bell.

For the actor was their theme. This was plain to every one in the pilot-house, the two waiters being gone. A remnant of the food was being consumed by "Harriet" and Joy. All the others were observing, like Ramsey, the morning star and the five men under it. Among her own and Mrs. Gilmore's draperies Ramsey found that lady's hand. Except a few low words between the pilots, conversation failed. Without leave-taking Ned left. Presently here he was beneath, on the skylight roof, and now he joined the actor. Ramsey let go the caressed hand and moved nearer to Watson. While he and she gazed far up the stream, yet watched the six men below, he repeated Ned's question.

"See that clump o' big sycamores a mite to lab-board o' where we're p'inted?"

She didn't believe she did.

"Well," he persisted, "that's it."

"That's what?"

"Why," said Watson, whose only aim was to set her once more at ease, "that's the p'int you----"

"Humph." She turned to the two ladies, who, with their eyes frankly below, were counselling together. "Let's go down there ourselves," she said, but they whispered on.

"Better not," put in Watson; "you can't help."

His kind intent did not keep the words from hurting. With a faint toss she said:

"I hoped we might be some hindrance."

She laughed in her old manner, dropped her glance again on the two men and the four, and hearkened. So did the two ladies beside her. They could all see who spoke below and could hear each voice in turn, though they could not catch what was said. The only sustained speeches were the senator's. The general's interpellations were little regarded. The silent pair at the bell heard everything of essential bearing.

The consciously belated senator had begun with rhetorical regrets for the captain's and the commodore's illness and with paternal enthusiasm for those on whom it had brought such grave new cares. His own sympathetic share in their anxieties, he had hurried on to say, had robbed him of sleep and driven him up here solely for this interview. On the way he had chanced upon the general in the----

"Sssame ffframe of mind," the general had said, while the senator pressed as straight on as the _Votaress_.