"You"ve read books about this river!" she said.
"A few, drifting down it by flatboat."
"Oh, by Christopher!" broke out the mate, "I remember you now! Yo"re that play-actor! Yo"re the man, by gad! who hauled me into yo" skiff half roasted and half drownded when the _Quakeress_ was a-burnin"! By George, look here! What do you want on this boat, that you ain"t already got? Name it, sir, just name it! Oh, by hokey, sir, I----!"
Smilingly the actor shook his head while his wife beamed delightedly.
"We haven"t a want ungratified," he answered.
"Oh, please!" put in Ramsey, "yes, you have--one!"
"Have we, mademoiselle? Surely we have if you have."
The mate interposed. "That"s a daughter of Gideon Hayle, sir--as good a captain, by Joe, as ever took out a boat----"
The wife nodded gayly. "We know him," she said.
"Oh!" laughed Ramsey, scanning the pair up and down.
"What is it we want, worthy daughter of Gideon Hayle?" asked the player--"you and my wife and I--and your--this is your brother, is he not?"
Ramsey"s mouth and eyes spread wide. She turned to Hugh and at sight of his heavy face whisked round again with her handkerchief to her lips.
The mate spoke for her:
"That"s Captain Courteney"s son, sir."
"What Miss Hayle wants--" began Hugh----
"What _we_ want," said Ramsey----
"Yes," said Hugh, "what we want is the recall of----"
"An order," broke in the mate. "I know; my order for them two twins to go ash.o.r.e. You can"t have that, Hugh."
"We can!" said Ramsey, with tears in her laugh.
"No, sir-ee!" said the mate. "Ash.o.r.e they go!"
"Ash.o.r.e they don"t!" said Ramsey. "You just told this gentleman you"d do anything he----"
"I"d do anything he--yes, but"--the speaker looked beyond her--"Why, Mr.
Play-actor, them two young Americans come up here a-smellin" o"
buckwheat cakes and golden syrup, when they and some others--a general and a senator, wa"n"t they?--had had some political tiff with you----"
"Oh, not political at all! There"s a proposition--I had no idea it was theirs--to land our deck pa.s.sengers on----"
"On Turnbull"s or Natchez Island!"
Ramsey breathed an audible amazement.
"Exactly," said the player. "Well, I had the ill luck to call their scheme a bad name or two."
"Good! Now, sir, up they come here _a-demanding_ o" me to put you ash.o.r.e, "where he"ll get himself lynched," says they."
"Oh, bless my soul!" cried the actor. "If that was all and you want to please us, just let them alone."
The mate smiled to Hugh and shook his head. "It wa"n"t all. _You_ know it wa"n"t. Gad, Mr. Hugh, they got to go!"
"Oh, they must not!" begged both players. A few steps away the bishop and the judge were holding an earnest conversation with the grandfather Courteney, and his eye tried to call the mate. But Ramsey, holding to Hugh by his sleeve, gave the old gentleman a toss of her chin, a jerk of her curls, and took the mate by a coat b.u.t.ton. Her slim, silken figure intercepting him, and his rude bulk smiling down into her upturned face with a commanding yet amiable restiveness, made a picture to the players and to the distant pilot, but much more than a picture to the captive himself. He had thought he had been fending off the banter of a child, but now, suddenly, this was not a child. A being was here not entirely mundane nor quite supernal yet surpa.s.sing all his earlier knowledge of feminine quality, something for which a year"s hard thinking would not have found him a definition. Holding his b.u.t.ton, she spoke low:
"Please change that order." What mysterious compulsion there was in that "please"! Her fingers tapped Hugh. "_He_ wants it changed--for me. We"ll be responsible!"
"Oh, you will!" The big man did not look at Hugh; his smile broadened on their common captor. Her answering eyes laughed, but even in them, deep down, he saw a pleading ardor at once so childlike, so womanly, and so celestial that suddenly the deck seemed gone.
"Please change it! quick!" she murmured again, "for us!"
He felt an inward start and saw a vision--of the future--with those two in the midst of it. His brightening glance went belatedly to Hugh, and verily there was more of Hugh also than he had ever seen before, but the cra.s.s significance of his smile was quite lost on the pair.
"Yes," insisted Ramsey, "_we_ want it changed, him and me--I mean he and I!"
The big man"s laugh drowned hers. "Oh, it"s plain either way. Well, by George! that _is_ an argument. You and him! Gad, the case is covered!
You and him has got me--by the hind leg!" He began to turn away, for yonder, apart from commodore, judge, and bishop, but with Madame Hayle at his side, stood the captain, giving him a sign which he promptly pa.s.sed on up to the pilot. "By the hind leg," he repeated, whereat a t.i.tter broke from the averted face of old Joy, while Ramsey stood agape at her success.
"They _stay_--the twins--stay _aboard_?" she asked the actors, Hugh, and the mate in turn.
"Lord, yes!" said the latter.
On tiptoes of grat.i.tude she had parted her lips to say more, when the air overflowed with the long bellow of the boat. "Oh," she cried protestingly in the din, "but that"s to land!"
His reply was unheard, but a shake of his head rea.s.sured her as he moved toward the elder Courteneys, whom bishop and judge had left, and who now stood alone awaiting him. She faced Hugh. He was telling the actor"s wife that this landing was to get a physician. Ramsey touched him and spoke low:
"We"re going to have an awful time. Don"t you think so?"
He did not say. The great bell tolled thrice. She waved him to look at the people ash.o.r.e, of all sorts and shades, coming down to the wharf-boat to see them, but suddenly, invited by a glance from his father, he stepped away to him. "Humph!" she laughed to old Joy, and started to join her mother, who was leaving the deck. But the mother motioned her back. "Where are you going?" whined Ramsey.
"To Lucian."
The daughter halted, aghast. "Has he got it?" But her mother went on without reply. She turned to the players and, when they smiled invitingly, rejoined them. When she inquired their name they said it was Gilmore.
"Will you tell me about the _Quakeress_?" she asked.
The husband said he would. "But you don"t mean now," he qualified, "when so many things are happening?"
"N-no," she replied grudgingly, and presently added: "I"m afraid my brother"s got the cholera." But then she brightened triumphantly.
"Anyhow," she said, "the mate didn"t know that." The engine bells jingled, the wheels paused, and the sh.o.r.e appeared to drift down upon them, pushing the crowded wharf-boat before it. "What d"you reckon this beautiful boat is saying to herself right now?" she asked.
"She ought to say," critically put in the bishop, behind her, to the senator, while she turned and cast her head-to-foot scrutiny up and down the two, "that for the welfare of that wharf-boatful of men and boys, and of the homes they live in, she"d best not land, after all."
"That"s what she _is_ saying!" defensively cried Ramsey, and, sure enough, while she laughed the scape-pipes roared and the wheels backed till the wharf-boat stood still. At the same time the pilots changed watch. The captain sauntered to the forward rail. The commodore, with the mate and Hugh, went below. So closely did the actor"s eyes follow them that Ramsey asked: "What are they going to do?"