Gideon's Band Part 69

"And besides," Ramsey thought on, "neither twin has ever spoken falsely to the other." Why, then, sleep was good!

Even in outer sights and sounds there was solace and rea.s.surance: in river and sh.o.r.e forever pa.s.sing majestically up-stream through floods of moonlight; in the rhythmic flutter and rush of wheels and foam, and in the keen quiver of the _Enchantress_ flying to New Orleans on the swiftest wings steam could give. Ramsey sent Phyllis up to bid Julian be at ease, and the maid, returning, announced that both the commodores had gone to rest but that madame was anxious to come back to the invalid the moment he would permit. She added, unasked, that Captain Hugh was in the captain's chair.

The hour pa.s.sed and Julian reappeared. The partial relief of mind which had come to all the others had in degree reached him. It enabled him, as he came down the wheel-house stair, to reflect, though with a shudder, upon that furious treatment which alone, he had somewhere heard, would counteract an opium poisoning, and upon Lucian's utter inability to endure any part of such a treatment. He found Ramsey hearkening at the door again, newly disquieted. The two servants were out at the rail of the wide guards.

"Ought his breathing," she said, "to sound like that?"

Julian thought not, but even a sister's solicitude offended his lifelong sentiment of paramount owners.h.i.+p in his brother. "Stand away, I'll let you know," he replied, pa.s.sed in, and closed the door.

Then all at once, as so often has happened to so many of us, he saw his heedlessness where he had fancied himself vigilant. The light was dim.

He knelt close to the sleeper. One long stare into the pale yet livid face was enough. Lucian was dying. Julian leaped to his feet to seek aid but saw its futility and fell again to his knees. Lucian was dying of the "black-drop" which his brother, in haughty ignorance, by the hand of Phyllis, had given him.

Presently Julian found voice, yet, mindful still of the listening Ramsey, let himself only softly murmur: "Oh, Lucian, my brother! Oh, Lucian, my twin brother! I've killed you, killed you twice over, my twin brother! G.o.d! but you're right not to live a cripple. And it was I who crippled you! Oh, Lucian, I'm the cripple now!"

Ramsey tapped. He sprang to the door and without opening it answered: "Yes, in a minute. He--he's all right."

At the wash-stand he lifted the phial of black-drop still half full. As quietly as if the dose were a dram at the bar he filled the measuring--gla.s.s and drank its last drop. Then he turned to the door and barely opened it.

"He's all right, Ramsey.... Yes.... Yes. He's done just the right thing.

So have I. Now, go away, please, wherever you like, only don't--stay--here just to bother us. I'll merely lie down beside him without--What?... No, go away! You'll find us all right in the morning."

LXIII

THE CAPTAIN'S CHAIR

On the next afternoon but one, while hundreds went down to the steamboat landing to view the new _Enchantress_, there was a double funeral in the old French cemetery, Saint Louis Street, New Orleans.

Returning from it together, Watson and his former "cub" spoke of Gideon Hayle.

"He takes the loss of them boys harder'n what I'd 'a' thought he would,"

said the younger pilot.

And Watson replied: "Yes, but he don't take it as hard as what, years ago, he tuck their fust refus'n' to go with him on the river."

They said no more all the way up Rampart Street to Ca.n.a.l, out Ca.n.a.l to the steamboat landing, and across the levee to the _Enchantress_. An hour later they stood in her wheel-house, looking down on the same Sat.u.r.day afternoon five o'clock scene that Watson and Ned had thus contemplated from the _Votaress_ a hundred months before.

Here were the same vast piles of harvest wealth, the same crowds and little flags, the same shouting and tumult only grown greater, the same open sky--though of October--the same many-pillared cloud of black smoke, the same smartly painted b.u.mboats selling oranges, bananas, pineapples, corals, and seash.e.l.ls--many of the latter treated with puritanic art, having, that is, the Lord's Prayer bitten into them with muriatic acid. Here lay the same yellow harbor with many more fussy little tugs in it, its water low yet still mast-deep, its yard-long catfish and fathom-long gars leaping and wallowing after their prey, its white gulls flas.h.i.+ng about the steamers' pantry windows. Here was the same black forest of s.h.i.+ps in the up-stream and down-stream distance and here, finally, the same public hope and pride grown wider and loftier in their last affluence before entering that purgatory of civil war which now seems but a bad dream outlived.

Steam was up on the _Enchantress_, and every now and then her mighty wheels tugged on her hawsers. In the crowd gathered on the wharf to see her go were the Gilmores and the half dozen from Vicksburg and the Bends. Up on the hurricane-deck were two or three small knots of pa.s.sengers, chiefly ladies, unknown to the Gilmore group; but beside a derrick post, where we first saw Hugh on the _Votaress_, stood the three Hayles, old Joy, and "California"--bound once more for the gold-diggings. Near the Hayles, yet nearer the bell, was Hugh, in command.

"You don't reckon," said a voice in the throng, "that that's her captain, do you?"

"No," said another, "I should think not."

"Yes," said the very human Gilmore, "that's the captain."

Vicksburg and the Bends sent up smiles and faint wavings to Ramsey and her mother and only did not call to them because they were in a great city. It made them very proud and happy to see Hugh the master of this, to them, matchless wonder of utility and beauty, and they could not help saying things to each other with voice enough to let strangers around them know he was their personal friend. While they did so who should alight from a cab and glance up to Hugh but his grandfather. Hugh answered with a gesture toward the Gilmores, to whom the old gentleman promptly turned. There had arisen among the boats a good-natured custom of giving friends a free trip eight miles up the river, to the suburb of Carrollton. So a word from the commodore was enough; the players and their group hurried aboard with him and as they touched the lower deck the last bell sounded and the lines were cast off.

When they reached the hurricane-deck they were in the middle of the stream. They did not join the senior Hayles at once; Ramsey met them and with her they stood on the skylight roof watching the sh.o.r.es to see when they should stop drifting and gain headway. Over on the "Algiers" side of the harbor lay the _Paragon_, repairing a smas.h.i.+ng she had got at the wharf through the bad handling of another boat, else the Hayles would hardly have been going home on the _Enchantress_.

The crew of the _Enchantress_ stood about her capstan and their chantey-man, ready to sing when the swivel should peal and her burgee run down; but the Gilmore group were too far aft to see them. The player's wife, speaking gravely with Ramsey in low tones, remarked with sudden gayety:

"I see why we're here behind the bell. You're afraid they'll sing----"

Ramsey made a pleading gesture.

"Why, what can you expect," asked her friend; "not 'Bounding Billow'?"

Ramsey, laughing, could only repeat the gesture. The swivel pealed, down sank the burgee, a wind began to ruffle their brows, and up rolled the song:

"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de sea s.h.i.+ps come an' go, On de finess boat dat eveh float," etc.

It was still coming up when a young man not of the Gilmore group surprised the actor a moment aside.

"Mr. Gilmore, is that Commodore Hayle over there?... I thought it must be. I suppose he's going up home to settle his two sons' affairs. Mr.

Gilmore, they wan't bad, they were only wild. Sad, their having to be buried in the city. But in this climate, you know--hmm!--yes."

The song and his observations crossed back and forth.

"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, you'd ought to come befo'"-- (Chorus.)

"You don't remember me, Mr. Gilmore, but I was on the _Votaress_ with you and your lady and Madame Hayle and those twins and all. I married the young lady I was keeping company with then. There she is. Don't you re-collect my lending you my field-gla.s.s at the Devil's Elbow?"

"Dear me! was that you at the devil's elbow! I--I hope I returned them."

"Oh, you did! You remember the first clerk of the _Votaress_! He's her captain now. And Ned--you remember Ned, the pilot, don't you? Well, he's on her yet. I see you're lost in admiration of this most unusual sunset.

We almost always have these unusual sunsets. This is a wonderful country."

"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de sweet cane honey flow'.

(Chorus.)

"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, love a-knockin' at de do'."

(Chorus.)

Now the boat was in the pilot's hands. Hugh joined Madame Hayle and the two commodores at the derrick post. The same shrewd texas tender who had once abstracted the weapons of the twins from their stateroom set a second chair beside the captain's. Hugh offered the two seats to the commodores, but both declined. They of Vicksburg and the Bends watched the gorgeous October sunset beyond the low, flat orangeries on their right. "California" was with them and told them of the sunsets on the great plains. Gilmore generously kept the one-time lender of the field-gla.s.s and the lender's mouse of a wife beguiled with anecdotes while Mrs. Gilmore talked on with Ramsey, making fond and welcome incursions into her confidence.

"Isn't it ridiculous," murmured Ramsey, "that he seems condemned to do everything in the tamest possible way? Not that he cares; he seems almost to like it so. It's so right now. He can't proclaim anything.

And--you see why, don't you?--neither can I."

"Ramsey, you needn't. Only do one thing for us, Gilmore and me, and we'll know. When we've landed and the boat starts away again and he--"

She finished in a voice too small for type.

At Six Mile Point the actor escaped his bonds and for a moment got Hugh into his sole possession.

"Certainly, under these conditions," he a.s.sented, "you can't _a.s.sert_ anything--of that particular sort. But see here: You can tell me, just for us two Gilmores exclusively, what your next boat will be named.