Gideon's Band Part 18

"And de commodo' he at de gemp'men's table, an' so he, Mr. Hugh, he 'p'inted to de ladies' table, an' will you please fo' to set in de place o' yo' ma?"

"Oh, rid-ic-ulous! Who? me? I?" The laugh grew plaintive.

"Yes, you; why not?" said the pilot at the wheel, with his eyes fixed far up the river.

But Ramsey glanced at her short skirts and laughed to all by turns: "Oh, it's just some ridiculous mistake!"

"No, miss, 'tain't no mistake. All de yetheh ladies incline de place."

Every one laughed. "Oh, he on'y off' it to one! But when she say fo' to off' it to you den dey all say de same; ya.s.s'm, sawt o' in honoh o' yo'

ma."

"They're afraid that seat'll give 'em the cholera," said the pilot in grim jest, still gazing up-stream, but the ladies cried out in denial for all their s.e.x.

"I accept," said Ramsey, with a downward pull at her draperies. "How's my brother?"

"Thank y'ma'am," was the bowing waiter's only reply. He tripped down the pilot-house steps and away.

"Your brother," said the squire's sister as they all followed, "isn't in nearly so much pain, we hear."

Ramsey flashed: "Does that mean better--or worse?"

"Why--we--we can't always be sure."

"Ringading tingalingaty, ringadang ding!" sang the festive bell up and down the deck to which they began to descend by a narrow stair, old Joy at the rear. Madame Hayle, ascending by another with the Bayou Sara priest, espied the nurse and beckoned her. The pilot, high above, observed the three as they met, although his ear was bent to a speaking-tube. Now he answered into it: "Yes, sir.... Yes, close above the point--Point Breeze, yes, sir."

As he resumed his up-stream gaze he saw old Joy, still at the stair, stand as if lost and then descend alone while madame and the priest moved toward the sickroom. The helm went gently over and the _Votaress_ rounded the point, but the priest waited outside where madame had gone in, and when the door reopened enough to let one out it was Julian who grimly confronted him, holding a pen, half concealed.

"My brother declines to see you, sir."

A flash came from the eyes of the priest, but the youth repeated: "My brother _declines_ to _see_ you, sir."

The visitor caught breath to speak, but the great bell pealed for another landing and burial, and madame came out. She addressed him a few words in French, and with an austere bow to Julian he humbly turned away at her side.

XX

LADIES' TABLE

Hugh stood at the head of the midday dinner-table, waiting for a full a.s.sembly of its guests. The Vicksburg merchant and his wife, the planter from Milliken's Bend and his wife, also stood at their places.

The two ladies glanced about as if listlessly noting the cabin's lavish arabesques and gilding, while each really studied and knew the other was studying the captain's son. For this tale which we tell, they saw. It was "a-happmin'" before their eyes and, in degree, to themselves. Hugh and his father, the commodore and madame, the first mate, the twins, Ramsey, and the committee of seven--who, we shall see, were not taking discomfiture meekly--were scarlet threads in the story's swiftly weaving fabric--cogent reasons, themselves, why these two ladies had helped vote Ramsey to the seat next Hugh.

His face, Hugh's, was not easy reading. Certain shadows cast on it by that part of his mind just then busiest were quite unintelligible.

Deciphered they would have meant a solemn joy for his broadening accountability; an awesome anxiety and distressed eagerness to meet and fill that accountability as fast as it broadened. He was just then recalling one of Ramsey's queries of the evening before, when she had seemed so much younger than now, and when, nevertheless, a germ of fellows.h.i.+p had sprung up between them; that word of hers about "feeling oneself widen out of oneself," etc. He did not at present feel himself nearly so much as he felt things round about him growing and growing.

The _Votaress_ had grown, grown wonderfully, and the story happening, the play being acted on her three decks at once, was neither story nor play to him. Which fact was one of the few things the two gentle students of his face made out to read. However, it quite rewarded them; it went, itself, so well into the story.

And certainly, as even the Gilmores would have said, it is not when our spiritual vision sees things at their completest values that _all_ the world's a stage and its men and women _merely_ players. Nor is it at our best that we discern our own story, as a story, while it happens. It is a poor eye that sees itself. When Ramsey arrived at the table Hugh's gaze was so big with the reality, not the romance, of things on all the three decks that she had to laugh a little to keep her balance.

Yet her question was an earnest and eager one: "Is my brother better, or is he worse?"

The toll of the bell on the deck above--to land, as we have said, near Point Breeze--came like a spectral reply, invoking, as it did, new trouble unknown to her though just beneath her feet.

"He's better not to be worse," said Hugh, and when she frowned whimsically he explained: "His sickness is not quite the same as that on the lower deck."

"How is it different?" she asked, unconsciously keeping the whole company of the ladies' table on their feet. At the gentlemen's table, just forward of them and tapering slenderly away in the long cabin's white-and-gilt perspective, that grosser majority who had come only to feed were mutely and with stooped shoulders feeding like pigeons from a trough, and far down at its end the white-haired commodore had taken his seat, with senator, judge, squire, general, and the seventeen-year-old Hayle boy nearest him on his right and left. The bishop was not there.

He was at the ladies' table, paired with the judge's sister"--a leaden load even for a bishop.

"Your brother's illness is so much slower," Hugh said.

"So, then--he--he had it when he came aboard?"

"He had it when he came aboard," a.s.sented Hugh, moving for the group to be seated. "But----"

"Wait," said Ramsey. "Mustn't we all be as gay and happy as we can?" And when every one but the judge's sister playfully said yes she turned to the Vicksburg merchant: "Then will you change places with Mr. Gilmore?"

Faith, he would! It paired him with the actor's wife, and his wife with the actor. Gayety began forthwith. "And will you change--with--with you?" Ramsey asked the planter of Milliken's Bend and the squire's brother-in-law.

Indeed they would. The change not only paired each with the other's wife but brought the brother-in-law next to Ramsey. Underfoot meantime the engine bells jingled, overhead the scape-pipes roared, and in every part the boat quivered as her great wheels churned or was strangely quiet as they paused for another signal. So all sat down, well aware what the landing was for, and began blithely to converse and be waited on, as if the world were being run primarily for their innocent delight.

What a Sabbath feast was there spread for a bishop to say grace upon, and what travellers' hunger to match it. Among Hugh and Ramsey's dozen, if no further, how the conversation rippled, radiated, and out-tinkled and out-twinkled the fine tablewares. One almost forgot his wine or that the boat and her wheels had stopped; might have quite forgotten had not certain sounds, starting in full volume from the lower deck but arriving under the cabin floor faint and wasted--emaciated, as you might say--stolen up and in. A diligent loquacity contrived to ignore the most of them. The soft chanting of the priest as he walked down the landing-stage and out upon the damp brown sands, followed by the bearers of the new pine box and by a short procession of bowed mourners, perished unheard at the table; but many noises more penetrative were also much more discomfiting, and it was fortunate that the talk of the bishop and others could charm most of them away even from the judge's nervous sister, who, nevertheless, amid such remote themes as Jenny Lind, Nebraska, coming political conventions, and the new speed record of the big _Eclipse_ in the fourteen hundred and forty miles from New Orleans, could not help a light start now and then. It was good, to Hugh and to Ramsey, to see how the actor, Gilmore, despite this upward seepage of ghostly cries--faint notes of horror, anguish, and despair--attenuated groans and wailings of bodily agony--held the eyes of the ladies nearest him with tales of travel and the theatre, and mention of the great cut-off of 1699, which they would soon pa.s.s and must notice. But quite as good was it to the wives of Vicksburg and Milliken's Bend to observe with what fluency Hugh, commonly so quiet, discoursed to Mrs. Gilmore and to Ramsey on other river features near at hand: Dead Man's Bend, Ellis Cliffs, Natchez Island, the crossing above it, Saint Catherine's Creek, and Natchez itself.

"Where I was born!" said Ramsey. "Largest town in Mississippi and the most stuck-up."

The other Mississippians laughed delightedly.

"We stop there," said Hugh, "to put off freight."

"Mr. Courteney," asked Ramsey, "what _is_ a 'crossing'?"

There were new lower-deck noises to drown and Hugh welcomed the slender theme. "The channel of a great river in flat lands," he said, "is a river within a river. It frets against its walls of slack water----"

"I see!--as the whole river does against its banks!"

"Yes. Wherever the sh.o.r.e bends, the current, when strong, keeps straight on across the slack water till it hits the bend. Then it swerves just enough to rush by, and miles below hits the other sh.o.r.e, swerves again, and crosses in another long slant down there."

"Except where it breaks through and makes a cut-off!"

"But a cut-off is an event. This goes on all the time, in almost every reach; so that pilots, whether running down-stream in the current or up-stream in the slack water, cross the river about as often as the current does."

"Hence the term!" laughed Ramsey.

"I think so. You might ask Mr. Watson."

"No, I'll ask him what a reach is--and a towhead--and a pirooter--oh, don't you love this river?"