"Then why is your father there?"
"To get the twins away from the senator and the general, and their brother away from them and back to his----"
"Sister!" softly laughed Ramsey. "Oh, not to mom-a! just to me! I"ll go--" She started, but Hugh said:
"To you, yes, when my father has put him in a way to cover his loss without telling your mother."
Their eyes met again. Hers were bright and wet with accusal. "Is that _your_ proposition?"
"Yes, and my father"s too."
She whipped round and gazed out again over the tawny waters. To gaze out beside her he came so near that they almost touched. The sh.o.r.es were once more a clear picture, greener than ever and unvexed by the wind.
The rain was slight and fine. The boat was swinging northward toward a small blue rift in the gray. At the room"s farther door the mate was leaving the Gilmores for the forecastle.
Without a stir she asked: "Why don"t _you_ bring Basile?"
"I must stay with our friends here."
The surprised girl glanced across at the players.
Side by side they also were gazing out and speaking low. "I"d like to know why with them."
"And I must tell you."
She faintly tossed, gazing out again: "Why "must"?"
"Because to you I _can_--tell things."
"Haven"t you told your father yet--about--Phyllis? Humph!--had to practise on me first."
"Yes. But there"s a better reason--for everything I"ve ever told you."
She slowly faced him, and he added: "I want your help."
"For what? Not the Gilmores?"
"Yes, for them too now. They"re in real danger."
"Fr"--from what? Not--not from--my brothers?"
"The twins, yes, and the general, John the Baptist, and a dozen more.
They"ve guessed it out that the Gilmores----"
"Are--So have I! A, b, ab----"
Hugh was mute. She glanced round at the players" backs and then again at him, asking with soft abruptness:
"Where"s the bishop? With mom-a yet?"
Hugh kept silence. "No, you know he"s not," she answered for him. In her steady eyes he could see, growing every moment, a new sense of the fearful plight of things and of her relation to them. Her young bosom rose and fell, and when her lips parted to speak again their corners twitched. "He--he"s the new case! I will mention it! I"ve a good right.
Why shouldn"t I?"
"Only that he didn"t want you to know. He wanted you--us--all, without knowing, to go right on with the programme. We must. Even now you will, won"t you?"
She could only nod. Just then Mrs. Gilmore"s maid, in a long burnoose, with umbrellas and wraps, rose into sight close below, on a stair from the pa.s.senger-guards, spread one of her umbrellas and looked eagerly about for her mistress. One glance went up to Ramsey, who beckoned through the gla.s.s, but the maid gave no sign of seeing her. The slight rain had momentarily freshened, and she was so m.u.f.fled to the eyes in the light veil which was always on her head or shoulders in pretty Spanish fashion that when she started forward round the skylights for the other side of the roof Ramsey laughed to Hugh:
"Why, I know it"s Harriet by her veil, don"t you?"
"I know only the veil. I saw it come aboard."
"The veil of mystery!" she playfully murmured, began to hum a tune and bit her lip on noticing that it was "Gideon"s Band." "Don"t you think I might omit that to-night?"
"No, it"s the best thing you do."
"Humph!--mighty poor reason--Aha! I knew it was Harriet."
The Gilmores were beckoning out their window. The actor opened the door on that side and the maid came warily in. Briefly and in hurried apology under her breath while dealing out her burdens she told of the impatience of those below to resume the rehearsal and of their having driven her to this errand the moment they could. Mrs. Gilmore handed Hugh a shawl for Ramsey and an umbrella for himself, her husband laid a mantle on her shoulders, and the maid reopened the door he had shut; but Hugh called from the one opposite that it was the better way and the players started for it. The younger pair gave them precedence, a breeze swept through, the maid reshut her door, Hugh, holding his, bade her follow her mistress, she sprang to obey and the "veil of mystery," which caught in the closed door, was stripped from her like a sail from a wreck.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Stop!... Stop! the safest place for you on this boat now is right where you are standing--Phyllis"]
Instantly she crouched and with the swiftness of a wild creature flashed round and s.n.a.t.c.hed open the door by which she had entered; but a form pressed between her and the opening and when she threw up her face she was looking close into the astounded eyes of Hugh Courteney. Her frame recoiled but not her eyes; his own held them. Without turning he shut the door at his back as Ramsey closed the one opposite, and still holding the maid servant"s gaze, he followed her slow retreat, and in that droll depth of voice which earlier had been Ramsey"s keenest amus.e.m.e.nt said to the eyes so near his own:
"Stop!... Stop! the safest place for you on this boat now is right where you are standing--Phyllis."
x.x.xVII
BASILE USES A CANE
There was a gorgeous sunset that day. Many were on the uppermost decks to see or show it, amid a lively social confusion dull to Hugh but delightful to Ramsey. In fact, Hugh had begun to want her and the hurricane-deck to himself.
The actor and his wife were there. And there, indifferent to sunsets but as hungry as ever for company, was Basile. Dinner, at midday, had dissolved the group which the twins had for a time held together. The captain had squared Basile with the ticket treasurer and by some adroitness of Ramsey and Mrs. Gilmore the restless boy had been won from his brothers and given a hand at euchre with the actor, the senator, and a picturesque Kentuckian, late of California, "back East" by way of the Isthmus and about to return by the Plains.
Another of this hurricane-roof a.s.semblage was a young gentleman whom Ramsey told Basile it was not a bit nice to speak of as Watson"s cub.
And there were all the amateur players, eager for the evening"s performance; and there, too, the senator, the general, John the Baptist, and others with whom Ramsey had not made better acquaintance only for lack of moments! One of these was the Californian. Think of it! A man whose shirt-pin was a gold nugget of his own digging, yet a man so modest as to play euchre with Basile, and who stood thus far utterly uncatechised save by John the Baptist. Oh, time, time! A history of this voyage must and should be written with large room given to these last ten hours: "Chronicles of a Busy Life," by "A Young Lady of Natchez."
Captain Courteney stood near the bell. Watson was up at the wheel. His cub--whose attentions to Basile, like the Californian"s, only Ramsey could not fathom--told her this was the second dog-watch. He was telling her everything he knew. She was asking him everything he knew not.
Indeed, among all there was great giving and getting of information on matters alow and aloft. There was, too, frequent praise of the commodore, the doctor, the priest, the sisters of charity, Madame Hayle--all those heroic ones on the immigrant deck, where the pestilence was making awful headway. But there was so perfect a silence as to the bishop that it was manifest that every one knew about him but was too discreet to tell.
Matters beyond the boat, too, far and near, were much discussed, though some actually saw the sunset they were all there to see. Nowhere within five hundred miles the compa.s.s round, the actor said, was there a town of ten thousand souls, if of five thousand. Nowhere within a hundred miles was there a town population of five hundred. Since the morning thundershower the _Votaress_ had come ninety miles, yet the great Yazoo Delta was still ahead, abeam, astern, on the river"s Mississippi side.
Some one told two or three, who told four or five, it was a hundred and seventy-five miles long by an average of sixty wide, and covered seven thousand square miles. From zenith to farthest east the clouds that overhung it were pink and ashes-of-roses in a sea of blue. The entire west was one splendor of crimson and saffron, scarlet and gold, with intervals of black and green. Even the turbid river between was an unbroken rosy glow. The vast wooded swamps over on that sh.o.r.e were in Arkansas. Louisiana had been left behind in that vivid moment when Ramsey and Hugh were making their discovery of "Harriet" and when Hugh, we may here add, was handing back her "veil of mystery."
"When I saw you do that," Ramsey had later said to him, "I knew she was safe--and she knew she was!" The laughing girl"s mind was brimful yet of the amazing incident, at every pause in her talk, which was now with this one, now with that, and often with the cub.
It was interesting to note the masterful-careless air with which Watson"s apprentice more than once endeavored to make it clear to Hugh, concerning this daughter of Gideon, that, whereas the mud clerk, at his desk below, was utterly love-bemired, his, the cub"s, liking for her was solely for her countless questions, of which he said that "you never could tell where the next one would hit." No singed moth he! To prove it he offered Hugh a very blase query: "What do women ever do with all the answers we men give "em, hey?"