Gideon's Band Part 29

"So was I."

Ramsey flinched worse and stared away with lips apart, wondering if that was what gave him that look.

"But Phyllis," she resumed, "was lost."

"Was she?"

"Why ... wasn't she? Mammy Joy says my uncle--in the blazing pilot-house--did you know my uncle Dan?"

"Yes. That night, half an hour before the burning----"

"Oh! was it at night?"

"Yes. I was sitting with Phyllis, behind him, with him at the wheel, as we're sitting now behind Mr. Watson."

"Uncle Dan didn't hate you, did he?"

"No, indeed."

"Then why didn't you tell him about Phyllis? He was her master, you know."

"I did. He wormed it out of me. He was like you--in some things."

The questioner flashed and stared but then dropped her eyes. "Did he--have red curls?"

"Yes, redder than yours."

"Humph!" ... She mused.... "I'm tired here. Let's go down by the Gilmores and walk--'thorts.h.i.+ps!"

They went. "Well?--about Phyllis? What did she whip you for? Being bad?"

"Bad or good was all one to Phyllis."

"Wasn't--weren't--weren't you ever bad, Mr. Hugh?"

"Frequently."

"How were you bad?--steal jam?--eat green plums?"

"Yes; had fights, went in swimming--in snake holes----"

"D'd you tease your sisters?--pull their hair?--let the sawdust out o'

their dolls?"

"Yes, yes, all that."

"Hmm! that's nothing. Basile and I--Ain't you going on? Of course, if you don't want to I--I shan't worm. Why did Phyllis--oh, pshaw!"

With the exclamation came such one-sided mirth that Mrs. Gilmore looked round. But her husband said there would never be anything to look round for while "that laugh" kept its quality.

Presently Hugh found himself murmurously "going on" and Ramsey listening. It was a great moment in both lives. If we cannot see it so, no matter; but in still depths of perception below all formulated thought both the youth and the girl were aware, separately, that the story of Phyllis was not the largest fruit of the hour.

Phyllis, Hugh said, had not hated him alone. In her heart had burned a pure flame of wrath against every member--save one--of the fair race to which she belonged by three-fourths of her blood but by not one word of human law. Wronged for the race she disclaimed, she hated the race that disclaimed her. Hated even the mothers of Hugh and Ramsey, who abhorred slavery, a slavery enthralling men, women, children in whose veins ran not four only but eight and sixteen times as much masters' blood as slaves'. She hated them because all their sweet abhorrence found no deliverance or revenge for her. Mitigations there were, but mitigations she loathed. The uncompromising quality of her hatred was one thing that had made dissimulation easy, and through all Hugh's childhood she had practised it perfectly in every relation and direction on every one but him. Another eas.e.m.e.nt had been her indomitable, unflagging triple purpose to be free, to be reunited to her master, and to be revenged.

And a third, craftily won through the trustfulness of Hugh's Quaker mother, had been the opportunity to wreak the frequent overflow of her resentments on him. The fact that he was almost of the exact age of her own lost offspring had forever goaded her, and to him, with each maltreatment, she had told again her heart's whole burden, outermost wrong, innermost rage, thus recovering poise to treat his sisters and brother with exemplary care and tenderly to discuss with their mother Hugh's precocious reticence and gravity. Always she had held a self-command cunningly tempered in the fire of her triple resolve and fitted to the desperate chances with which she unceasingly crossed daggers. She never tired of telling her little white slave that, having herself once got the lash, she was only paying interest on it through him. Him, at least, she would teach to hate slavery as she hated it.

Hugh's listener moved as if to touch him. A boat was coming by. They paused in their "thort-s.h.i.+ps" walk and with a slight choke in her voice Ramsey asked: "You know what I hope?" Her voice went lower. "I hope you learned."

"That's the strangest part," said Hugh. "I did."

The boat pa.s.sed, a cloud of burning gems. "Go on," said Ramsey, "I can see that and hear you at the same time."

But Hugh's mind was too masculine for such legerdemain and though she sighed and sighed again he waited until the vision grew dim astern.

Then, as he was about to resume, she interrupted.

x.x.xI

THE BURNING BOAT

"Where was the commodore all that time?" she asked.

"In Europe. We did business there too. It wasn't all river and boats those days."

"Humph!" She preferred it to be all river and boats.

"But at length," said Hugh----

"What length?"

"Ten years. Grandfather was coming home, to stay. We were all to go up to Saint Louis on the _Quakeress_."

"Phyllis too?"

"Yes, to meet him there and bring him back with us."

"Ten years!" marvelled Ramsey. "Hadn't Phyllis ever heard from my--from Walnut Hills?"

"Now and then, yes; and when those ten years seemed to have worn her, body and soul, to the breaking point----"

"You're strange. You feel tender to her yet."

"Perhaps I do. One day--night--she got word--I heard it from my nursery bed--she got news; news that to her was as good and as bad as news could be."

"That _he_ was on the river again!" guessed Ramsey.