STUDYING THE RIVER--TOGETHER
They did not tie to the wharf-boat at Natchez. At that stage of water there was good landing a few yards below, where the sandy bank was not too wet to walk across to a higher one which floods never reached, close under the bluff. Here had left the boat half a dozen pa.s.sengers including the judge and his sister. So good-by to that lady. Never would _she_ have set foot on the _Votaress_ had she dreamed she was to be "dumped off" on such a spot. She believed that girl of Gideon Hayle"s had laughed as she went up the perilous stage plank. And really there is no proof to the contrary.
Another incident awoke in Ramsey no mirth. Yet she never forgot it. It occurred on the upper, greener level that overlooked, across the river, a great sweep of Louisiana lowlands at that moment bathed in a golden sunset. The same light fell upon the incident itself--the Marburg lad"s burial; fell upon the bent mother standing behind the priest and between her elder son and Madame Hayle, surrounded by her fellow exiles, many of whom, with faces hidden like hers, wept more for her bereavement than they had earlier done for their own. So the rude pine coffin descended into the unhallowed ground. From the hurricane-deck Ramsey looked down with wet eyes to the meek mourner returning aboard on the arm of her Otto. Thinking how easily in the play of chance the lost brother might have been saved and her saved brother lost, and recalling the plight of the _Westwood_, she suddenly realized that no one could tell who might go next--"to high-low." Otto Marburg, glancing up, saw her tears, and would have paused but for the sacred burden on his arm.
At the same time, for eyes, even wet eyes, as lively as Ramsey"s there were livelier things to see. Hugh had gone ash.o.r.e and up to the wharf-boat, crossed it, and boarded the busy _Antelope_ with several letters in hand, the twins" letter among them. Said the squire"s brother-in-law:
"That boy must know the danger to him there is in that doc.u.ment," and the planter of Milliken"s Bend agreed.
So did their wives. There was "everything in it he wouldn"t want there and nothing he would want."
He was doing the "brave thing," they all said, and the wives called it too brave. The brave thing, they thought, "ran a slim chance against Hayle"s twins."
"My dear ladies," said the planter, "it runs the only chance he has. The brave thing is the only thing those two young fire-eaters have any respect for." He stopped short; Ramsey had overheard. Yet she kept a pretty front.
"Why do you call him "that boy"?" she laughingly asked.
"Well, really, because," replied the planter, twinkling, "he"s so much more than a boy. Don"t you think so?"
She gave him a sidelong glance, twitched her curls, and looked down ash.o.r.e. Her mother was there with the "boy"s" grandfather. They were getting into a rickety hack. Now Hugh joined them from the _Antelope_, and they went whipping up the steep road across the face of the bluff and into the "stuck-up" Natchez atop the hill. She guessed their errand.
Meantime the _Westwood_ had reached the wharf-boat, put her bridal pair aboard the _Antelope_, and backed out again so promptly that as the _Antelope_ cast off and started after her she had rounded Marengo Bend and was showing only her smoke across Cowpen Point. And now reappeared Madame Hayle, the commodore, and Hugh, bringing with them--welcome sight--two sisters of charity. The moment they touched the lower deck the _Votaress_, with John Courteney on her roof, backed away, and soon, in the first bend above, any eye could plainly see the _Westwood_, still less than four miles off across country though eight by the river, with the _Antelope_ four miles behind her and four ahead of the _Votaress_.
Said the pilot, Ned, to Ramsey, pulling the wheel down to head into the crimson west:
"Four "n" four"s eight, ain"t it? Used to be. Can"t tell what"ll change on this river. When Lake Concordia, over here in Louisiana, was part o"
the river, an" Vidal"s Island, in its middle, was in the river, this bend wa"n"t jest eight mile" round, it wuz twenty. These are _the_ bends. F"om here to Cairo we got to run one etarnal wriggle o" six hund"d "n" eighty mile" to make three hund"d "n" seventy."
"Oh, I"m glad of it! At least--ain"t--ain"t you?"
He shook his head: "Not this run." The supper bell rang and Ramsey fled, but he repeated: "No, not this run!" He turned and looked back upon Natchez bluff far behind the steamer"s wake. "I wished every last Hayle on this blessed boat wuz off o" her an" "top o" you!"
On that bluff, in colonial days, had stood Fort Rosalie, whose dire tragedy Ramsey, down in the cabin, found Gilmore, at table, recounting to Hugh and others: murder of its French settlers by Natchez Indians and the extermination of the Natchez tribe by the French from New Orleans.
He was brief, and for a good ending went on to recall his own first sight of the spot, before the time of steamboats, when Natchez was a village; how, as his low broadhorn came drifting down around this point close above it, the bold rise swung into view, crowned with pines, its lower parts evergreen with the bay magnolia, and its precipitous front lighted up, as now, with the last beams of day. He made it seem so fair and important that Ramsey"s native pride and a shame of her previous blindness almost drove her from the board to take a last look at it from the stern guards; but she was again in her mother"s seat and again very hungry. He was good company to every one, the actor; always acting, yet always as natural as if acting and nature were one; a quiet education to Hugh, an unfailing joy to his wife, and both to Ramsey.
After supper the players got out an old two-act play for the next evening"s entertainment. They cast Hugh and Ramsey for two small roles, and for two larger ones found a young brother and sister--of Napoleon--at the mouth of the Arkansas--who would have just time to act them before leaving the boat. Supper had prevented its guests from seeing the _Votaress_ turn Giles"s Bend and Rifle Point and meet another boat as glittering as she and pa.s.s Lake Saint John and Fairchild"s Bend--where the river widened to three miles about Fairchild"s double island. Wherefore the indulgent Gilmores, on Ramsey"s pleading, elected to coach first the brother and sister--of Napoleon--letting Hugh ascend to the starlight of the roof and Ramsey follow attended once more by old Joy.
She met Hugh at the foot of the pilot-house steps. "We are postponed!"
she said, "you and me--I!"
"Yes. Do you know for what?"
"Yes, because those other two parts are so much bigger than ours, and because--I d"n" know--I believe they think I"m sleepy--ha, ha! I"m glad, for _I_ want to study this _river_, all I can, day and night. And you--must, mustn"t you?"
"Yes," he said, which was all he was to say in the play.
Half-way up the steps she halted: "You"re to be a captain on it yourself as soon as you"re fit, ain"t you?"
"If that time ever comes."
"Phew! how modest" She stared an instant, turned her back, clasped the rail, and with her forehead on her arms laughed till Hugh was weary--not necessarily long.
He spoke: "Here come the _Westwood_ and the _Antelope_."
"Where?" She glanced round, sprang up the steps, and soon was making room for him beside her at a larboard window behind Watson. Looking thence across the long, slim neck of Cole"s Point they saw the two boats coming back westward in the upper reach of the fourteen-mile eastern loop they were running to make two miles into the north. Now the _Westwood_ pa.s.sed and now the _Antelope_, their skylights glinting like fireflies through the intervening tree tops, and Watson showed how to tell them apart by night. Presently they turned north again and vanished, leaving the mighty stream to its three students.
"It"ll cut off this whole fourteen mile" some day," said Watson; but the other two, in their dim nook, remained silent. He knew that sort of silence. When Ramsey by and by spoke, her words were to Hugh exclusively and in undertone.
"The _Quakeress_--Oh, I didn"t mean----!"
"That"s all right," said Hugh. "The _Quakeress_----!"
"Oh, I meant the _Antelope_! She"ll soon be in the lead again?"
"Yes."
"With both those letters."
"Both."
"Ain"t you glad I didn"t mean the _Quakeress_?"
"No."
"Well, you"re glad I didn"t mean Phyllis, ain"t you?"
"No."
"Would you really be willing to tell me about Phyllis?"
"I would."
"You wasn"t willing--before--was you?--were you?"
"No."
"What"s changed your mind?"
"Lawd, missy!" sighed the forgotten Joy.
But Ramsey insisted: "What"s changed it?"
"You, chiefly."
"I haven"t," very quietly said the girl.
"You have."
Ramsey glanced cautiously at Watson, but the pilot"s eyes were a league ahead. Hers returned to Hugh. "Wasn"t it my brothers changed your mind--the twins?"