RAMSEY AT THE FOOTLIGHTS
The actor stepped to his wife. "Will she do it all?" he inquired, and Hugh, who had started to join the audience by a short cross pa.s.sage, lingered to hear.
"Heaven knows," laughed the lady, shutting herself out, yet keeping the door; "I too am banished." Her glance drew Hugh nearer. "Miss Ramsey begs us, all three----"
"For her to beg is to command," said Gilmore playfully.
"Yes, and so I"ve promised for all three----"
"Promised! What?"
Mrs. Gilmore whispered: "To pray for her."
The smiling actor and the unsmiling youth looked at each other. "Why, that"s," said Gilmore, "entirely----"
"Practicable," said Hugh. He moved on, and into the pa.s.sage. Gilmore, following, stopped at its outer end. At the inner stood Hugh, waiting, in shadow and with downcast eyes, for the song to be done. What unvoiced supplication, if any, may have been behind the lips of either was not for the other to know. Yet it was an hour of formidable besetments and we may pardon the actor if an actor"s self-consciousness moved him to reflect that there were thousands of healthy men, some as raw as Hugh, some as ripe as himself, who, for the sake of a promise, a wife or a maiden, or even without them, standing thus, had prayed.
He tiptoed to the youth"s side and together they leaned in enough to look down the dimmed cabin, over ranks of silhouetted heads, to the bright stage front and the singer. She was in the centre of its light and the last notes of her simple song called for so little effort that they only helped the eye to give itself wholly and instantly to the mere picture of her, slender, golden, magnified by this sudden outburst into blossom, and radiant with the tenderness of her words as a flower with morning dew. The next moment she was bowing and withdrawing, aglow with grat.i.tude for an applause that came in volume as though for the finish of a chariot-race, and Hugh saw as plainly as the experienced actor, if not with as clear a recognition of Mrs. Gilmore"s attiring skill, that the tribute was at least as much to the singer as to the song.
The same perception came to Ramsey in the stateroom to which she had returned and in which she stood alone, hearkening and trembling. She noiselessly laughed for joy to be, however unworthily, the daughter of Gideon Hayle, never doubting it was for his name, his blood, his likeness, she stood thus approved. The conviction gave her better heart for the task yet before her. She glided to the rear door, locked it, and dropped to her knees.
"Oh, Lord "a" mercy!" she murmured. "Oh, Basile, my brother! And oh, mom-a, dear, brave mom-a!" She did not name her father, though his figure was central in her imagination, broad, overtowering, intrepid, imperious.
The applause persisted. Now it sank but at once it rose again, easy overflow of a popular mind glad of all unrestraint and always ready--as even she discerned--for the joy of exaggeration. She sprang up and moved toward it, her eyes sparkling responsively. Yet her tremor was piteous and in mute thought she said again, at high speed:
"My brother, oh, my brother! I"ll be back in a minute. This ain"t for my own silly self, you know, honey. It"s for them that need it; for all the people, up stairs and down, and for--for the boat!--as any of her--owners--would do for any of our boats. You said you wished _you_ could do some fine thing for somebody--in a fire--or explosion, and this is just as awful only not so sudden, and I"m doing this in your place, honey boy; yes, I am, this is just as if you did it yourself!"
The applause was still summoning her as she ended. A hand, probably Mrs.
Gilmore"s, had tried the locked door. From the lower deck leaked up the sad "peck, peck" of the carpenter driving his nails, and close outside the door sounded sharp footsteps and the mingled voices of the pilot"s cub and the actor calling with suppressed vehemence to one of the pantrymen: "Here, boy! Here! Go below like a shot and tell "Chips" to stop that pounding this instant! He can saw if he must but he mustn"t hammer!"
Then as if carried there by some force not her own she found herself again in the bewildering sheen of the footlights, smiling merrily to the hushed, half-seen a.s.semblage, and suddenly aware of every throb of the _Votaress"s_ bosom, every fall of her winged feet, every tinkle of her cabin"s candelabra, and, most vivid of all, horribly out of time with all, the still insistent "rap, tap, tap" of the carpenter"s hammer.
At the same time, unconfessedly, the eager audience took note of quite another group of facts, emphasized by the appearance of Hugh in a back row of seats, by the presence of Hayle"s twins in the dusk of the front row, with war even in the back of their heads, and by the illuminated form of the singer just drawing a last breath of preparation to exhale it in melody. Hardly in the gathering was there one who had not by this time learned the whole state of affairs between all Hayles, all Courteneys, and all those others whom its schemings, aggressions, discomfitures, tirades, and prophetic threats had entangled with them.
Every one thought he knew precisely both Hugh"s and Ramsey"s varied relations to each and all those persons, his and her effects upon them, and his and her ludicrously dissimilar ways of getting those effects.
They knew this warfare was still on and was here before them now. In every phase of it in which Ramsey had taken part she had come off victor and in every instance had done so by the sheer power of what she, with fair accuracy, called nonsense. So now they were ready to see her, at any juncture the twins or accident might spring, show the same method and win an even more l.u.s.trous triumph in keeping with her own metamorphosis. Nay, they were more than ready to lend a hand toward such an outcome. Like Watson, they had sentimentally matched Hugh and Ramsey, prospectively, in their desire, and saw that such a union must sooner or later be, if it was not already, a paramount issue in the strife. In such expectancy sat the throng, keenly aware of the twins at their front and Hugh at their back, as Ramsey"s indrawn breath began to return in song, its first notes as low as her voice could sink, its time slow, its verbal inflections those of the freight-deck negro:
"Do you belong toe Gideon"s ban"?"
So far it got before it was drowned in a deluge of laughter and applause. She had made, as Gilmore said to his wife behind the curtain, a "ten-strike." Her hearers did not pause an instant to determine whether the utterance was wit or humor or pure inanity. It fitted their mood; fitted it better than the actor or Hugh had believed it could. To the company"s notion it was good nonsense offsetting and overpowering an otherwise invincible bad nonsense and s.n.a.t.c.hing from it all right of argument, sympathy, or judicial appeal; laughing it out of court, to remain out at least until the completion of this voyage should give this jury, these hearers, an honorable discharge. The shrewd good sense of it, in their judgment, was the most fun of all, and while in her heart Ramsey was gratefully giving the credit of that to the actor and Hugh, the people naturally gave it to her and laughed and clapped and pounded again on second thought.
Now abruptly they hushed and let her resume:
"Do you belong toe Gideon"s ban"?
Here"s my heart an" here"s my han".
Do you belong toe Gideon"s ban"?
Fight"n faw yo" home!"
Again the audience broke in.
"Fighting for your home!" they laughed to one another as they clapped.
Home was the catchword of the times. Jenny Lind was singing nightly:
"Midt bleasures undt balacess----"
and three fourths of all the songs not of the opera were of home and its ties. What the word might exactly signify in this case made little matter; on her lips, from her breast, it meant human kindness, maiden innocence, young love; meant courage, fidelity, the right, the true, the beautiful, the good; meant anything, everything, which she herself, shining there above the footlights like a star in the sunset, their darling of the hour, could be fancied to stand for; meant, anyhow, the twins" war-song turned into a peace-and-joy song.
"Tsh-sh-sh! let her go on!" And she went on: she, Noah"s ark, and the _Votaress_, all three, together:
"Den come de buck-ram and de ewe----"
"What? what"s that?" They leaned and whispered right and left. "New words! new words!"
"Den come de buck-ram and de ewe----"
"Why--she must "a" made those words, herself!"
Not she. She knew no better than to believe them the improvisations of the Gilmores.
"Den come de buck-ram and de ewe De ole niroscenos and de gnu----"
Pun! a pun! a real pun!
"Do you belong toe Gideon"s ban"?"
Yes, verily! They clapped, ha-haed, leaned around one another to see the dark upturned heads of the twins, and stole backward glances on the immovable features of the captain"s son. At his side sat the Californian just then gravely murmuring to him, but he remaining as motionless as a Buddha. The refrain pressed on to its close, and the applause redoubled, but stopped as she prepared for another verse.
"Nex" come de mule and den de quail----"
Laughter! Mule and quail! royal pair of the cotton field, rightly thrice heralded!
"Nex" come de mule and den de quail, Nex" come de mule and den de quail, Nex" come de mule and den de quail, De monkey-wrench and de wiggletail."
The senator clapped yea, the general thumped his cane. Half-a-dozen voices began to chime with her, "Here"s my heart and----" till Julian looked round, when they stopped so short that the laugh swelled again and Julian resumed his seat. Only two or three saw Hugh and the Californian softly pa.s.s out together.
"No, no, no!" cried several, but that was to Ramsey for trying to get away. "No, you don"t! Another verse! sing anoth"-- Tsh-sh-sh!".... She sang:
"Den come de man-drake and de moose, Den come de man-drake and de moose, Den come de man-drake and de moose, De hickory-pottamus and de goose.
Do you belong----?"
Belong? How could they help but belong? Was ever anything such fun? Not itself, maybe, but she! And no more could Ramsey help belonging to them, though thoughts of the texas and of the immigrant deck--where the carpenter"s saw played an interlude to her every verse--pierced her heart at each throb of her pulse and of the boat"s pulse and at every glimpse of the scowling twins, dimly visible to her just beyond the footlights. Silence fell once more as she moved a step forward with a light in her eyes, a life in her poise, that made her a pure joy, albeit an instinct warned her that her tide was at the flood and she must make her exit on this wave. So with a light toss as if to say, "Positively last appearance," she sang:
"Den d"rattlesnake and de antidote, De rattlesnake and de antidote, De rattlesnake and de antidote, De rangitang and de billy-goat.
Do you belong----?"
The applause was as lively as ever and increased with each step of her bowing retreat. Near the stateroom door, chancing to look across the cabin to the one opposite, she saw within two or three of the amateurs clapping and the actor approvingly waving her off. Then finding herself alone she threw open the rear door and was in Mrs. Gilmore"s embrace.
"How"s Basile?" she demanded--"and the bishop--and Marburg"s mother? All this time----"