Gideon's Band Part 67

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.... Ya.s.s, 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 pa.s.senger 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.

Once more Hugh and Ramsey sat alone side by side under a glorious night sky, at that view-point so rarely chosen by others but so favored by her--the front of the texas roof. Down forward at the captain's station sat the two commodores and up in the pilot-house were the two pilots, the Gilmores, "California," Madame Hayle, and they of Vicksburg and the Bends.

In the moral atmosphere of this uppermost group there was a new and happy clearness easily attributable to a single potent cause--Madame Hayle. Her advent and the moon's rising had come in the same hour and with very similar effect. Every one was aware for himself, though n.o.body could say when any one else had been told, that while Gideon's decision was still withheld, madame, in her own sweet, absolute way, had said it would be forthcoming before the boat touched the Ca.n.a.l Street wharf, and that in the interval, whether Hugh and Ramsey were never to sit side by side again, or were to go side by side the rest of their days, they should have this hour this way and were free to lengthen it out till night was gone, if they wished.

It was not late in any modern sense, yet on the pa.s.senger deck no one was up but the barkeeper, two or three quartets at cards, the second clerk at work on his freight list, a white-jacket or two on watch, and Joy and Phyllis. Thus a.s.sured of seclusion the lovers communed without haste. There had been hurried questions but Hugh had answered them and Ramsey was now pa.s.sive, partly in the bliss of being at his side as she had never been before and partly in a despair growing out of his confessed purpose to leave the _Enchantress_ at Red River Landing. The grandfather had already a.s.sumed Hugh's place and cares aboard, and it was Hugh's design to make his way, by boat or horse, up to and along Black River in search of the twins.

To allay this distress Hugh's soft deep voice said:

"Suppose you were a soldier's wife. This is little to that. This is but once for all."

"Yes," murmured Ramsey, "but I'd have one advantage."

"That you'd be his wife?"

"Yes," whispered Ramsey, who could not venture the name itself, for the pure rapture of it.

"Why, you're going to be mine. As the song says: 'I will come again, my love, though a' the seas gang dry.'"

"Hugh, didn't you once say I didn't know what fear was?"

"I certainly thought it."

"Well, now I do know."

He made no reply and she sat thinking of his errand. If he should find her brothers he would meet them in the deepest wilderness. Only slaves, who could not testify against masters, would be with them, their loaded guns would be in their hands, and their blood would be heated with--She resorted again to questions in her odd cross-examining way.

"You say you think there's going to be a war?"

"I fear so."

"Humph! fear. If there should be will you fight?"

"Certainly."

"Humph! certainly. I should think--you'd hate to fight."

"I'd fight all the more furiously on that account."

"Humph!... On which side?"

"Ramsey, I don't know. I _don't know_ till the time comes."

"Then how do you know you won't fight my brothers--now?"

"I shan't be armed."

"But if in an outburst you should s.n.a.t.c.h up some weapon?"

"I don't burst out. I don't s.n.a.t.c.h up."

"Humph! Wish I didn't."

They were rounding Point Breeze. The long reach from Fort Adams down to Red River Landing lay before them. "Hugh, did you ever have a presentiment? Of course not. I never did before. I got it a-comin' round Hard Times Bend."

"Then I can cure it--with a new verse, one our poet has made and given me. It shall be our parting word. Shall I?"

"Oh, yes, but not for parting! I don't want any parting!"

He spoke it softly:

"I dreamp I heard a joyful soun'-- O hahd times!-- Love once mo' foun' de last turn roun'

Hahd Times Ben'.

Los' an' foun', broke an' boun', Love foun' an' boun' de last turn roun'

Hahd Times Ben'."

Ramsey barely waited for its end. "What's that light waving far away down yonder? It began as you did."

"It didn't know it. It's only some one on the Red River wharf-boat, wanting us to land," said Hugh, and before his last word came the _Enchantress_ roared her a.s.sent to the signal. But Ramsey had spoken again:

"What's this, right here?" She sprang up and gazed out on the water a scant mile ahead. There, directly in the steamer's course and just out of the moon's track, another faint light waved, so close to the water as to be reflected in it. The moment the whistle broke out it ceased to swing and when the whistle ceased the engines had stopped.

"What is it?" she asked again as Hugh stood by her looking out ahead with eyes better trained to night use than hers.

"A skiff," he replied, "with some message."

She could see only that Watson had put the light on their starboard bow.

It seemed to drift toward them but she knew that the movement was the steamer's, and now the light was so close as to show the negro who held it. He stood poised to throw aboard a billet of wood with a note attached. And now he cast it. The lower guards were out of Ramsey's line of sight but a cry of disappointment told her the stick had fallen short and would be lost under the great wheel, which at that moment, with its fellow, "went ahead." But as the _Enchantress_ pa.s.sed the skiff its occupant called out a hurried statement to the mate, on the forecastle, and as the skiff and its light swept astern the mate repeated the word to the commodores.

"Man at Red River Landing accidentally shot. Must be got to the city quick or he can't live."