"She has not," put in Hugh with a very solemn voice and solid look. The girls nudged elbows. "But," he added, to Mrs. Gilmore, "for the better comfort and safety of both sick and well we must let her off."
Must! Ahem! The amateurs lifted their brows. Of which was he sole owner, Miss Hayle or the boat? "Orders!" softly commented one tall youth.
"Yes," said Hugh, facing him with a gaze so formidable, yet to the rest so comical, that the nudgings multiplied.
"Miss Hayle"s songs, however," Hugh began to add.
"Yes, how about the songs?" asked some one. "They"re no servant"s part and they"re out before the curtain."
"She must sing them," replied Hugh. "They won"t keep her long and they involve no contact."
"Right!" exclaimed one. "Good!" said another, and yet another. "Without them we might as well give up the whole business." From the curtains through which he had been peering the actor glanced back. "Those footlights are capital," he said to his wife, and then, for the joy of all: "We"ve got a full house!"
The wife looked, turned quickly, and murmured to him: "Hayle"s twins in the front row."
"Yes," he said, absently again, "with war in their eyes.... Now, Mr.
Hugh, if you"ll send for Miss Hayle----"
"Harriet"s gone for her," replied his wife.
"Here I am," spoke Ramsey at the door of a stateroom appropriated as a pa.s.sageway. And a.s.suredly there she was; but by the magic of dress, through the trained cunning of Mrs. Gilmore"s mind and "Harriet"s" hand, and even more by the imprint of her new weight of experience, she was Ramsey transformed, grown beautiful. An added year was in her face. A chastened tenderness both lighted and shaded it, half veiling yet half rea.s.serting its innocent hardihood. The astonished amateurs hailed her with a clapping of hands, in which, it pleased her deeply to notice, Hugh Courteney, staring, took no share. Beyond the curtain the unseen audience answered with a pounding of heels and canes in good-natured impatience. Gilmore hurriedly waved away all the lads but Hugh, and Mrs.
Gilmore all the girls but Ramsey. To her she glided while Hugh and her husband conferred on some last point.
"Well, dear," she said, pressing her backward into the stateroom, "are you ready?"
"No, dear Mrs. Gilmore, please, no, I"m not."
"Ah, yes, you are. You"ll go on from"--they pa.s.sed out and entered the next room forward--"from here. And mark! when you find nothing between you and the people but the footlights, and their glare blinds you, don"t stand close over them trying to see, or they"ll make you look scared and pale, and you"re not scared the least bit, are you?"
"I don"t know," laughed Ramsey, softly, through tears. "I never was, before; never had sense enough, mom-a says. But, oh, I know I"m ashamed.
I"m that "shamed that I wouldn"t wonder if I"m scared too. Oh, dear Mrs.
Gilmore, Basile"s so sick! The doctors are doing all they can for him, and mom-a and mammy Joy are with him; but he"s so tortured with pain, and with fright! And the bishop--he"s pow"ful weak, as mammy Joy says.
One of those sweet sisters--of charity--I got her up through the speaking-tube--oh, you know what I mean--and she"s there now talking to him _so_ beautifully! And down on the lower deck, freight deck, Madame Marburg"s sick too, and her son and the priest and the other sister are with her and with the other sick ones--there"s a dozen of them!" The last words were to Gilmore as he and Hugh appeared at the outer door.
The actor stepped inquiringly into the narrow room and began a warning whisper but Ramsey spoke on to wife and husband by turns: "And in the face of all that here we are--or here I am--about to do the silliest, most heartless thing in all my silly, heartless life. No, I"m not ready."
"Tsh-sh!" whispered the husband, with both hands up. "My dear young lady, this isn"t you; you"ve caught this mood of a moment from your brother."
It was not his words, however, that startled Ramsey to silence; the audience was again stamping and pounding. Now she resumed: "Oh, I hear!
Mrs. Gilmore, the trouble"s not that home song nor the spring song nor the love-song; it"s that silly thing you-all say I _must_ sing if I get an encore--which I can"t believe I"ll get!"
"My dear, you"ll get several. We"ve arranged that."
"Arr"--! Why, I"ve only that one silly thing!"
"The fate of the whole show is in that one silly thing."
"Oh, it"s not! It"s in you two talented, professional, famous people!"
"Ah, maybe it ought to be, but it"s not. That"s the way of the stage, my dear. Your silly thing has plenty of verses. Sing only two at a time."
"A sort o" Hayle"s twins," laughed the girl. Then despairingly she dropped to the edge of the berth. But Hugh had been pushing in past the players and as he reached her she sprang erect again.
"This is entirely my doing," he said to her. "These two good friends mustn"t urge you to sing. They"re in danger, you know; greater danger than they"ll believe."
Gilmore broke in: "Now, Mr. Hugh, listen to me."
But Ramsey put out a hand. "No, _you_ listen--to him," and Hugh went on:
"Should it come to be known by--certain ones----"
"Certain twos," said Ramsey, "go on."
"It would double, or treble, that danger."
"My dear boy--" began the actor again, but his wife restrained him, and Ramsey whispered at him in turn:
"Tsh-sh!" Then she prompted Hugh: "And so----?"
"So you must sing without any urging but mine."
Her lips parted in droll repudiation, but he went on.
"And you"ll give the encore."
"Oh, when did you learn to talk? I--w-i-l-l--n-o-t!"
Once more the actor tried to break in, but his wife eagerly whispered: "Let them alone! Let--them--alone!"
"Success hangs on it," persisted Hugh, "and success here means success all over the boat. It will mean their" (the Gilmores") "safety; while failure-- Think of it, Miss Ramsey.... Don"t you see?"
She stared an instant and then with a sign of distress and aversion gasped: "Go away! Go away!" and dropping to the berth cast her face into its pillow. With gentle speed Mrs. Gilmore pressed Hugh aside and took his place. The stamping and pounding, for a moment suspended, broke forth afresh. "Send him away!" cried Ramsey, her voice m.u.f.fled by the pillow, one eye fitfully glancing from it, and one arm waving backward.
"All advice rejected! Send him away! Send them both."
With such dignity as they could save, the two outcasts fled, meeting and turning back half the stage company while the actor"s wife shut the door.
"Is she ill?" asked the gaping girls. "Is she ill?"
"Not at all," "No," said the actor and Hugh, right and left, the one complacent, the other "ironer" than ever. "She is, eh--she, eh----"
Every head was lifted to hearken. The cabin"s applause ceased abruptly for a second or two, or three. Then again there was a stillness broken only by the speeding of the boat; and then, like a perfume from some wilderness garden, came the untrained notes of a song, a maiden"s song of her lost German home, and leaning elatedly from the reopened door Mrs. Gilmore loudly whispered:
"She"s on!"
XL