The words were half drowned by Lucian, who s.n.a.t.c.hed from Hugh the cane he tendered, answering the less crafty Julian, "Take it, you fool! take any odds they"ll give!" and, while Julian complied, adding to Hugh: "Oh, you"ll pay for this--along with the rest of it!"
"You"ll pay for this first!" put in Julian, "and with your lives--the pair of you!"
Hugh and Gilmore merely turned again toward the stair, but a voice stopped them though addressed only to the twins.
"Did you say pair?" it inquired.
The boat was at the bank; her great wheels were still. The sun"s last ray tipped the oak-leaf caps of her soaring chimneys. Once more from the cook-house rose the incense of coffee, hot rolls, and beefsteak, and from her myriad lamps soft yellow gleams fell upon the wind-rippled water and, out of view on the other side, into the tops of the dense willows. Over there the senator, the general, and the company that had gone with them looked down upon two movements at once. The funeral they could not help but see; the other was the wooding-up. The mud clerk had measured the corded pile, and the entire crew, falling upon it like ants, were scurrying back and forth, outward empty-handed, inward shoulder-laden, while those who stood heaping the loads on them sang as they heaped:
"Do you belong to de Vot"ess" ban"?"
"You don"t mean just the pair, do you?" repeated Watson. He looked down loungingly from a side window of the pilot-house. "There"s anyhow five on our side," he added. "I"m in that tea party."
Julian had caught breath to retort, when from a new direction a beckon checked him and at the nearest corner of the texas he beheld again Ramsey. Mrs. Gilmore was not with her, but at her back were the nurse and Basile. The boy wore such an air of terror that the player instantly pressed toward him.
Ramsey"s beckon, however, was to Hugh. Her bright smile did not hide her mental pain, which drew him to her swiftly despite the twins" deepening frown. The two brothers heard the question she asked him when he was but half-way; perhaps she meant they should. "Can you call through Mr.
Watson"s speaking-tube to mom-a--and the commodore?"
"Certainly."
"Tell them"--tears suddenly belied her brightness--"to come up to the bishop, quick. I"m "fraid--afraid----"
A word or two more Hugh failed to hear, but even the twins, at their distance, read them on her lips:
"The bishop"s going to die."
She sprang to Gilmore. His arm was about Basile; he was trying his pulse. The twins would have followed but in between came senator--general--all that company, moved by physical foreknowledge of an invitation whose drawing power outweighed whatever else land, water, sky, or man could offer. Suddenly it pealed in their midst:
"Ringading tingalingaty, ringadang ding----"
The captain stayed by his chair. "Cast off," he said to the mate beneath, and to Watson above: "Back your starboard."
A jingle sounded below. The steam roared from one scape and widened aloft like a magic white tree--twice--thrice. "Stop her." It ceased. She swung. "Go ahead on both." Two white trees shot up together and trembling she went. Down in the quivering cabin, round the shining board, every one"s spirit rose with the rising speed.
"Senator, "twas I sent you them hot rolls, suh."
"Why, thank you! But--don"t disfurnish yourself."
"General, them fried bananas----"
"Th-th-thank you, sir, I have a suff-fficient plenty."
Only the seats of the Courteneys, the Gilmores, Ramsey, and Basile stood vacant.
x.x.xIX
FORt.i.tUDE
"Courage," the slender play was called. It is to be regretted that we cannot fully set it forth, for Gilmore was himself its author.
Also because, whatever it lacked, there was in it a lucky fitness for this occasion, since, conditions being what they were on the decks above and below, the one strong apology for giving it was the need of upholding the courage of its audience.
It was even a sort of kind rejoinder to the various ferments kept up by the truculent twins, the pusillanimous exhorter, and the terrified Basile. Its preachment might well have been less obvious, though lines, its author bade Hugh notice, never overbalanced action, never came till situation called them. It was to the effect, first, that courage is human character"s prime essential, without which no rightness or goodness is stable or real; and, second, that as no virtue of character can be relied on where courage is poor, so neither can courage be trusted for right conduct when unmated to other virtues of character, the chiefest being fidelity--fidelity to truth and right, of course, since fidelity to evil is but a contradiction of terms. "From courage and fidelity," it was the part of one player at a telling moment to say, "springs the whole arch of character," and again, "These are the Adam and Eve of all the virtues." (Adam and Eve were decided to be quite mentionable. Mention was not impersonation.)
Naturally the Gilmores knew every line of the play.
"As perfectly," ventured the two young Napoleonites, "as John the Baptist knows the moral law, don"t you?"
"Better, I infer," said Gilmore abstractedly. They were in the ladies"
cabin, awaiting its preparation as a stage, behind the curtains that screened it from the gentlemen"s cabin, the auditorium. His wife smiled for him.
"Even my Harriet," she said, "knows one or two parts. She"s played Miss Ramsey"s in emergencies."
Her half-dozen feminine hearers flinched. Yet one said, excusingly: "That"s a servant"s part, anyhow."
"And Harriet"s her very size and shape," said another.
And another, drolly: "They"re enough alike to be kin!"
"Harriet"s free, isn"t she?" asked the first.
"Yes," replied Mrs. Gilmore, without a blush, looking squarely at Hugh, who stood among them silent.
"You"d never notice she was a nigrah if you wa"n"t told," said another, "or didn"t see her with nigrahs."
But then said a youth, cousin to one of the girls: "Yet after all a nigrah she is."
"No such thing!" said his cousin. "After all that"s what she isn"t. Our own laws say she isn"t."
"Well, I say she is. One drop of nigrah blood makes a nigrah--for me, law or no law."
"Well, that"s monstrous--for me."
"Yes, your politics being what they are."
"My pol"--I"m as good a Southerner as you, any day!"
"All right, but I shan"t play if that born servant is allowed to take any but a servant"s part."
To Hugh a crisis seemed to impend, but he held off for the Gilmores, who seemed to be used to crises.
They had not thought of Harriet, they said, for any part but Miss Ramsey"s. Miss Ramsey might find herself too distracted by--other things. Or, even if not, the doctor, or the captain, might think Harriet"s contact less contaminating than Miss Ramsey"s.
Their smile was not returned. Hugh gravely nodded but the rest shook their heads. Impossible! And suppose it were possible! they were not going to shun Miss Ramsey for refusing to shun "a sacred duty." By duty they meant the bishop, aware of his illness but not of his extremity, and none but Hugh and the Gilmores knowing that only two doors from the bishop lay Basile, also stricken, and that Ramsey and the old nurse were with the boy. The young people fell into pairs confessing their contempt for the besetting peril. Vigil is wearisome and they were almost as weary of blind precautions as, secretly, were Hugh and others. The two Napoleonites "didn"t believe doctors knew a bit more than other folks--if as much!" The two cousins so unimpeachably Southern were "convinced that contagion never comes by contact," and two or three said "the cholera was in the air, that"s where it was, and whoever was going to get it was going to get it!" They all agreed that "if Miss Ramsey, because of the extra strain she was under, had lost her nerve----"