"Praise de Lawd!" said Joy, from her knees.
Mrs. Gilmore drew Ramsey backward and shared a chair with her. The exhorter and a stout few hung to the hymn--
""Whi-dle Jur-dan ro-dled be-tweedn,""
--and the terrified boy talked on through everything, no one edging away from him as the wise might in these days.
"I"m not fitt"n" to die, Mr. Gilmore," he said. "That pet.i.tion"s not my worst sin--by half--by quarter. But it"s opened my eyes. You-all that got it up, and you-all that signed it, it would open yours, one look below; and I want you-all, right here, now, to tell G.o.d you take it back, before he lays his curse on me! You can manage that somehow, Mr.
manager, can"t you? Can"t somebody pray it? Or--or can"t--can"t you vote on it?"
"Yes," broke in Ramsey, clung to by the player"s wife but standing and glancing from the player so directly to the senator that all looked at him, "vote! vote!"
He gave the player the sort of nod one gives an auctioneer, and the singers stopped. "I think we can," said the actor, "and that if the senator votes yea so will every one. All in favor of withdrawing the pet.i.tion raise the right hand. It is unanimous."
The exhorter was up. "Mr. play-actoh, that"s all right. I neveh signed that trick, nohow. So fah so good, fo" a play-acto"s church--ef you kin git sich a church into the imagination o" yo" mind! But vot"n" ain"t enough!" He pointed to Ramsey, fast in Mrs. Gilmore"s arms, and to her brother, in old Joy"s. "Vot"n" don"t take heh--naw him--out"n the gall o" bittehness naw the bounds o" iniquity. Oh, my young silk-an"-satin sisteh, don"t you want us to pray fo" you?"
Ramsey"s courage was tried. Many gazers, but particularly the judge"s sister, seemed, by their eyes, crouching to pounce on her whether she answered yea or nay. "I know," she said, in tears again, and unconsciously wringing her hands, "I know I ought to, but--but I--I"m afraid there isn"t time. For I want--oh, I--I want to vote again! I want to vote to take up a collection, and a big one, for those people down-stairs that mom-a"s with. And then we can pray for her--and for Captain Courteney. Mom-a"s a Catholic but it"s in her Bible the same as in any: "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."" The last word was but a breath on her quivering lip. Facing the actor she stood and waited. Joy was getting Basile away.
"It is moved by the last speaker," said the player, "and seconded by"--he glanced inquiringly about--"by several--that we make an immediate contribution for the benefit of our deck pa.s.sengers, who are in dire need, and that----"
"That we make it a big one!" repeated Ramsey.
"All in favor--" he said. "Unanimous. I will ask Mr. Courteney and Miss Hayle to take up the collection."
The dispersal of the meeting found the lady of Milliken"s Bend with the judge"s sister. The judge, joining them, reported that the laughing Ramsey"s collection was double that of the solemn Hugh. The sister"s eyes snapped as she put in: "She made me double my contribution." Ramsey pa.s.sed at a distance. "It"s a shame to keep short dresses on a girl of that age and of her--her----"
"Spontaneity?" asked the judge. "I like spontaneity, even exuberance, at times."
"Well, I don"t," said the sister.
"No," murmured the judge. These two, who were to get off at Natchez, were just beginning to be enjoyed--as types. The sister was one who had all her life complained of "enlargement of the spleen" and even oftener of a "bitter mouth." On which the judge"s only comment was: "Hmm!" Just now, as to Ramsey, he grew daring.
"Her dress," he said, "is longer than it was yesterday."
"It"s a mile too short."
"As much as that?"
"I wish you were not going to leave us so soon," said the lady of the Bends, and then bravely added, of Ramsey: "Her dresses are short by her own choice, old Joy says."
"Shouldn"t doubt it a moment."
"Yes, she keeps them short to keep her mother young. I think that"s right sweet of her, don"t you?"
"No," replied the sister, and went to lock her trunks.
XXVII
PILOTS" EYES
Once more the hurricane deck. What s.p.a.ce! What freedom! Again from the airy, sun-beaten roof, that felt as thin underfoot as the levelled wing of an eagle, the eye dropped far below to where the tawny waters glided to meet the cleaving prow or foamed away from the smiting wheels. Again the dazzled vision rose into the infinite blue beyond clouds and sun, or rested on the green fringes of half-drowned sh.o.r.es forever pa.s.sing in slow recessional.
Four in the afternoon. Esperance Point rounded and left astern in the east. Ellis Cliffs there too, whitening back to the western sun. Saint Catherine"s Bend next ahead, gleaming a mile and a quarter wide where it swung down from the north. And the _Votaress_ herself! Once again that perfect grace in the faint up-curve, at stem and stern, of the low white rail that rimmed the deck. Again, above the stained-gla.s.s skylights of the cabin, the long white texas, repeating the deck"s and cabin"s lines in what Ramsey called a "higher octave," its narrow doors overhung with gay scrollwork, and above its own roof, like a coronet, the pilot house, with Watson just returned to the wheel. Once more the colossal, hot-breathing twin chimneys, their slender iron braces holding them so uprightly together and apart, the golden globe--emblem of the Courteney fleet--hanging between them, and their far-stretched iron guys softly harping to one another in the breeze. All these again, and away out beyond the front rail, with a hundred feet depth of empty air between, the jack-staff, high as a pine and as slim for its height as a cane from the brake, its halyards whipping cheerily, the black night-hawk at its middle, a golden arrow at its peak.
John Courteney, coming up into this scene, laid a hand on his solitary chair at the forward rail but then paused. Between the chair and the skylights behind it stood the squire"s sister and brother-in-law and Ramsey. Yes, they eagerly agreed with him, the view ahead was certainly dazzling. Ramsey would have asked a question, but the husband remembered the contagion from whose field below the captain had just come, the wife noticed that the presence of ladies would keep the captain standing, and the three, remarking that such a scene was too brilliant to confront, moved aft. As they went, Watson, up at the wheel, and Ned, his partner, lingering by him, had a half-length view of them, their lower half being hid by the cabin roof, close under whose edge their feet pa.s.sed, where its shadow kept the deck cool. The wife still had her embroidery, the husband his De Bow. By certain changes about Ramsey"s throat and shoulders Ned noticed that she was in yet another dress, whose skirt--such part as showed above the cabin roof--was in flounces almost to the waist. He would tell that at home to his wife and daughter, who now and then depended on him for fashions, with striking results.
Watson, too, noticed Ramsey, yet his chief attention remained, as steadily as his gaze, on his steering-mark far up in the bight of the sunlit bend, at the same time including, here below, his seated commander.
"Cap" ought to be pootty tol"able tired, Ned."
"Well, now, he jest ought!" The partner dropped back and perched on the visitor"s bench, whence he could still see the river though not the closely intervening cabin--and texas roofs; and all the two said later was without an exchange of glances. Watson thought the captain would "rest more now, on watch, than what he did before, off," having got matters running so much smoother down below; though the cholera was "a-growin", straight along."
Ned told of his pleasure in seeing Hugh conduct the senator down to the devotional services: "Lard, they hev done him brown, ain"t they?--atween "em, Hugh and Hayle"s girl?"
"With some help," said Watson, modestly. "That pet.i.tion--ef th"s anything else aboard this boat as dead as what it is"--he ran into inelegancies.
Ned offered to bet it was not dead inside the senator, and Watson admitted that the statesman would probably never forgive the "genteel"
way he had been euchred; though like euchre, he said, a lot of it was luck.
"But, man! the bluff he _kin_ put up! Couldn"t believe my eyes when we"d pa.s.sed the hat an" adjourned an" I see him a-standin" at the fork o" the for"a"d stairs, ag"in the trunk room, same ole bell-wether as ever, a-makin" a _bully_ speech to Madame Hayle an" that Marburg chap down in the gangway, foot o" the steps, an" a-present"n" him our "oblations"--says he--meanin" the swag!"
"An" her a-translat"n" for him!" said Ned, fancying the scene, with the senator, under his mask, "a-gritt"n" his tushes!" and Watson, to heighten it, told of Hugh and the actor at one head of the double stair, and Mrs. Gilmore and Ramsey at the other--"a-chirpin" him on, an" the whole b"iler deck, ladies and gents, takin" it in, solid!"
The senator was long-headed. "Yes, an" yit Hugh"s throwed him fair jest by main strength an" awk"ardness."
"I dunno!" said Ned. "It wuz long-headed, too, fo" Hugh an" the play-acto"s to give him the job."
"It wuz long-headed in her who put "em up to it."
"Oh, look here! _She_ didn"t do that, did she?"
""Less"n I"m a liar," replied Watson, eyes front.
"Hunh! Wonder which! Say, Wats"; on the b"iler deck--did she have on this gownd she"s a-wearin" now?"
"No," said Watson, tardily, with eyes still up-stream.
"Not wast"n" yo" words," said the inquirer.
"No."
"A short answer turneth away wrath, I s"pose."