"He was wanted merely to get your letter off secretly."
"You lie!"
"Oh!" sighed the Yazoo pair. Ramsey shrank upon Mrs. Gilmore.
"Not at all," said a quiet voice overhead and the eyes of Julian, blazing upward, met Watson"s blazing down.
"Come," said the player"s wife to Ramsey, "come away."
"I won"t," tearfully laughed Ramsey, and Mrs. Gilmore and the squire"s sister had to laugh with her.
"The lie," said Hugh, "will keep. Your letter is such that the bishop declines to touch it."
The bishop swelled. Julian recoiled and, glancing behind him, confronted his mother.
"My son," she began, but he whirled back to Hugh.
"You keyhole spy!" he wailed; "you eavesdropping viper!"
Ramsey came tiptoeing along the edge of the pantry roof to light down between them but he imperiously motioned her off, still glaring at Hugh and gnawing his lip with chagrin. "Oh, never mind!" was all he could choke out; "never you mind!" He ceased again, to catch what Hugh was replying to him. Said Hugh:
"I"ll take your letter and send it with my own."
"No, sir! No, you grovelling sneak!"
"Mais, ya.s.s!" called Madame Hayle from her place, and Ramsey laughed from hers, but a new voice arrested every one"s attention. The bishop wheeled round to it with an exclamation of dismay that was echoed even by Julian. In the sick-room door stood Lucian, half dressed and feebly clinging to the jamb.
"Let him do it, Jule!" he cried in a tremulous thin voice. "Take the whelp at his word! Don"t you see? Don"t you see, Jule? We"ll have him in a nine hole. It"ll be h.e.l.l for him if he puts it through and worse if he slinks it!" He tried to put off the bishop"s sustaining arm.
A light of discernment filled Julian"s face. There was no time to ponder. He had always trusted Lucian for the cunninger insight and did it now though Lucian lay in the bishop"s arms limp and senseless. He drew forth the letter. Gayly stooping over the skylights Ramsey reached for it and pa.s.sed it to Hugh. Julian sprang up to the bishop, who had borne Lucian into the sick-room and now filled its door again, waving a cheerful rea.s.surance.
"A mere swoon," said the bishop; "all right again."
"It may be all right up there," the squire"s sister began to say to the actor"s wife--and hushed. But Ramsey had heard, as she watched her mother hurry below to the young Marburg brother lying as limp and faintly pink in death as her brother up here in life; heard, and thought of the perils in store for Hugh and his kin and her and hers unless this sweet, wise mother could charm them away as sunlight charms away pestilence. Mr. Gilmore called her:
"Come, we"ve lots to do."
But how could one come just then? A slight turn of the boat"s head was putting Natchez Island close on her larboard bow and, seven miles away, bringing hazily into sight Natchez herself, both on her bluffs and "under-the-hill." Nay, more; abreast the _Votaress_ was another fine boat. The _Westwood_, she was named. Her going was beautiful, yet the _Votaress_ was gradually pa.s.sing her. The Yazoo pair knew her well. When they made salute toward two men who stood near her forward skylights, one of them returned it.
"Why should he be so solemn?" asked the wife.
"Why shouldn"t he?" laughed Ramsey.
"Because he"s a mere pa.s.senger, on his wedding tour."
"Humph!" said Ramsey. "Weddings are solemn things. Is that other man the captain?" she asked the husband.
"No, I regret to say, he"s only her first clerk."
"Why should you regret to say it?" inquired the girl; but the wife, too, had a question:
"Do you think there"s anything wrong?"
"N-no, oh, no."
The _Westwood"s_ clerk made a sign to Captain Courteney. The captain glanced up to Watson, and the two boats, still at full speed, began to draw sidewise together. But Ramsey"s liveliest interest was in the _Westwood"s_ crew, who, far below about her capstan, were paying their compliments to the newer, larger, speedier boat in song and refrain with stately wavings and dippings of ragged hats and naked black arms. Now the boats" guards almost touched and their commanders spoke so quietly together that she did not hear their words. But she noted the regretful air with which John Courteney shook his head to the _Westwood"s_ clerk and then to the pa.s.senger, and the _Westwood_ began again to drop behind. Hugh came near, paused, and glanced around.
"Looking for the commodore?" she asked.
"I thought you went down with Mrs. Gilmore," he replied, "to rehea.r.s.e your part in the play."
"Commodore"s down on the lower deck," she said; "freight deck--with mom-a--and the bishop."
Hugh showed astonishment. "The bishop?"
"Yes, mom-a made him go." She laughed. "Some of the sick folks down there are Protestants and were threatening to turn Catholic. Is anybody sick aboard the _Westwood_?"
"No."
"Then where"s her captain?"
Hugh made no reply but to meet her steady gaze with his own till she asked in a subdued voice: "Cholera?"
Hugh nodded. Each knew the other was aware of the song that floated up after them from the boat behind.
"What did the bridegroom want?" asked the girl.
"Wanted to give us a thousand dollars to take his bride--with him or without him--aboard the _Votaress_."
"But when he heard how much worse off we are--" prompted she.
"Yes."
"But, Mr. Hugh----"
"Yes?"
"Anyhow, this boat hasn"t got that boat"s trouble!"
"No," said Hugh, and knew they were both thinking of his father.
Together they stood hearkening to the last of the _Westwood"s_ song:
""Ef you git dah befo" I do-- _O, high-low!_-- Jest tell "em I"m a-comin" too-- _John"s gone to high-low!_""
XXIX