"My dear, you"ve sung only six minutes."
"It seems a week," she laughed. Hugh appeared in the outer door. She listened to the insistent applause. "I can"t go back, Mrs. Gilmore. I don"t need to, do I?"
"No.... Let go of me, dear!" The applause ceased. The curtain was about to "rise." The servant who was to draw the near half of it reached in from the cabin and closed their door. "No, dear, you won"t sing again till after this act, anyhow."
"Oh, not even then! I just must stay with Basile. I"ve sung all the verses but one, you know."
"We"ve got some more new ones," replied the lady, smiling to Hugh, who was moving to let her pa.s.s out.
"Got them!" cried the girl. She turned to Hugh. "They"ve made them!
Didn"t you know Mr. and Mrs. Gilmore made every line I"ve sung? Oh, Mr.
Hugh, what can"t genius do?"
Hugh solemnly dissented. "Those lines," he said, "could never have been made by mere genius!"
She stared at him a moment and then at Mrs. Gilmore, who was escaping by the outer door and who replied: "My dear, every line made for you has been made by Mr. Hugh." She vanished while the two stood dumbly face to face, but on second thought was back again just in time to see and hear Ramsey say, still gazing:
"Well, of--all--things! You! That frightful rubbish! You"ve got to sing the rest, yourself! Oh, Mrs. Gilmore, make him do it! It"ll tickle "em all to death--to hear _him_ sing Gideon"s Band!--and I can stay with Basile."
"Preposterous!" rumbled Hugh, and again, "preposterous!"
"Why--happy thought!" said Mrs. Gilmore. "Why, the very thing, Mr. Hugh, the very thing! Come. First we"ll take this young lady up-stairs----" As they started the Californian appeared, laying a caressing hand on Hugh.
XLI
QUITS
"Wait here," slowly said Hugh in response to the gold-hunter"s touch.
"I"ll--see you presently."
The modest adventurer waved a.s.sent, yet looked so disappointed that Mrs.
Gilmore, moving to take his arm, asked:
"Can"t Mr. So-and-so go with us?"
Oh, kind, quick wit! Three is a crowd, four is only twice two!
"Certainly," said Hugh, and to Ramsey added: "We"d better lead the way."
As they led she softly inquired: "Does he want to know something about the twins?"
What arrows were her questions, and how straight they struck home! Yet with that low voice for their bowstring they gave him comfort. Her forays into his confidence not only relieved the loneliness of his too secretive mind but often, as now, involved a sweet yielding of her confidence to him. Yet now a straight answer was quite impossible.
"He wants to know something about you," was the reply.
She let the palpable evasion pa.s.s. On the hurricane roof there was a new sight. The breeze was astern and moved so evenly with the boat as to enfold her in a calm. Looking up for the stars, one saw only the giant chimneys towering straight into the darkness and sending their smoke as straight and as far again beyond, spangled with two firefly swarms of sparks that fell at last in a perpetual, noiseless shower.
"Why do we go this way?" she asked, meaning forward around the skylight roof instead of across it.
"Because this way"s longer."
"Humph!" was the soft response. Presently she added, "We get more fresh air this way," and called back to their two followers: "This is to avoid the sparks."
"Um-hmm!" thought kind Mrs. Gilmore, and, "Oh, ho!" mused the Californian, not quite so unselfishly.
Around in front of the bell both youth and maiden observed how palely the derrick posts loomed against the spectral chimneys and their smoke, and silently recalled their first meeting, just here, in the long ago of two days earlier. The captain"s chair was occupied.
"Well, father," said Hugh.
"Good evening," twittered Ramsey.
"Good evening, Miss Ramsey. Be back this way, Hugh?"
"In a moment, sir." They pa.s.sed on. Ramsey looked behind at the Californian.
"What does he want to know about me?" she asked.
"He says," said Hugh, "he"s nursed this sickness at sea and at Panama and hasn"t the slightest fear of it."
"Humph!... That"s not about me."
"Yes, it--was. He"s taken a great fancy----"
"To Basile."
"To several of us, including Basile."
"Yes, because he and Basile played cards together."
"Not entirely for that," said Hugh, looking at her so squarely that she had to smooth back her curls. "But he"d like to help take care of him if you--and your mother, of course--are willing."
"Oh, how good--and brave! And he wants to ask me?"
"No, he"s too bashful. I"m asking for him."
"Too--!" Ramsey pondered. They stepped more slowly. The other pair turned back; the play demanded Mrs. Gilmore. The sick-room door was so near that Ramsey knew her mother was inside it, by her shadow on its gla.s.s. Suddenly, just as Hugh was about to say she need not hurry in--whereupon she would have vanished like a light blown out--she faced him. "D"you ever suffer from bashfulness--diffidence?"
He answered on a droll, deep note: "All its horrors."
She looked him over. He barely smiled.
"You never show it," she said.
"No." To the fanciful girl the monosyllable came like one toll from a low tower. She laughed.