Gideon's Band Part 5

Her mother smiled with new pain, but while the captain bowed himself away the old man replied: "Come, Miss Ramsey, sit down with me and I'll tell you the story--if we may, madam?--Hugh--some chairs, will you?"

Ramsey sprang to Hugh's aid, but her brother had a mind for mutiny. "You told me," he accused his mother, "that I could go watch them play cards!"

"Yes?" she asked in a pretty irony; "well, then, of co'se, sisteh or no sisteh, you muz' instan'ly go!" The steady tinkle of the sister's laughter as she pa.s.sed with a chair provoked her own: "Yes, go! Me, I'll rimmain with her till Joy"--the nurse--"ritturn from suppeh."

The boy went, flinging back for a last word: "You want to hear the story as bad as Ramsey does!"

"'Tis true!" she brightly said to the old gentleman. "Since all those nine year', me, I've want' to hear the Courteney side of that!"--little supposing that this was what neither she nor Ramsey would then or ever quite lay hold upon.

"No," laughed the irrelevant girl to the old man, "you sit here." She faced him up-stream, her mother on his "stabboard," as she said, herself on his "labboard," and Hugh on her left, "labboardest of all." But--to Hugh--"now, wait--wait! If I'm on your stabboard--how can you be--on my lab'--? Oh, yes, I see!" She dropped into her chair and, to Hugh's great weariness, laughed till her curls fell on her cheeks, larboard and starboard by turns.

Yet she ceased sooner than any one had hoped and the four sat silent while several ladies sauntered past on the arms of escorts, all highly entertained to see such cordiality between any Hayles and the Courteneys. One trio that paused near by to catch some Hayle or Courteney utterance praised aloud the enchantment of the night and of the boat's speed, and as they strolled on again, having caught nothing, Ramsey breathed softly to the old man:

"They can't describe it! n.o.body can! I've tried!"

Through four or five breathings of the giant chimneys she waited for the story she was not to hear, and at length herself broke silence. "I think," she said, "this boat is the most wonderful thing in the world."

No one rejoined that it was or was not. "Don't you?" she airily challenged the "labboardest of all," defensively letting herself realize how nearly a woman she was, how merely a boy was he.

"It's very wonderful," replied Hugh indulgently, as one so nearly a man should to one so merely a child. "I've never seen anything in this world that wasn't."

"Neither have I!" cried the girl and clapped her hands.

In that moment, for the first time, each thought how admirable the other, as yet so absurd, was--some day--probably--going--to be, and right there arose between them a fellows.h.i.+p more potent than either would recognize for a length of hours or days which is here best left unstated. Their two seniors saw; saw, but kept still--_mais pourquoi non?_--and why not?--while the great steamer breathed on, quivered on, breathed and quivered, on and on.

Ramsey transiently forgot them. "Do you, too," she asked her "labboardest," "feel yourself widen out of yourself and down and round into all this wonderful boat till you are it and it's all--you?"

"Yes," Hugh confessed, and they in turn were still, even though the seniors resumed converse, one mildly telling which sugar estates along the sh.o.r.e had been whose and the other recounting how their heirs had intermarried.

IX

SITTING SILENT

Thus they sat, Hugh and Ramsey, not recognizing that sitting silent is a symptom.

They sat and together felt their consciousness, his and hers, wing and wing, widen beyond their own frames to a mightier embodiment in this great cloud-white structure breasting the air that cooled their brows and cleaving unseen the flood so far beneath them. Together in this greater self they felt the headway of the long, low hull, the prodigious heart glow of the hungry fires, the cyclopean push of steam in eight vast boilers, the pulsing click and travail of the engines--whisper of valve and cylinder, noiseless in-plunge and out-glide of s.h.i.+ning rods--the ten-foot stroke of either shaft and equal sweep of crank, the nimble beat of paddle-wheels and tumble of their cataracts, the tranquil creep of tiller-ropes, and the compelling swing and sage guidance of the helm.

In this vaster consciousness, by a partners.h.i.+p which had to be tacit or instantly perish, they easily lifted and carried the abounding freight, of every form and substance, destined for the feeding, apparelling, or equipment of thousands awaiting it in homes and families whose strivings and fortunes helped to make that universal wonder of things which kept Hugh grave and Ramsey laughing. Especially the teeming human life of the great craft did these two jointly draw into this magnified self. They drew on deck-hands, mates, watchmen, firemen, engineers, and strikers, each with some aspiration and some appet.i.te. They drew in stewards, cooks, chambermaids, and cabin-boys, every one with yearnings and sacrifices; pilots, clerks, and mud clerks, full of histories and dreams. Down in dim s.p.a.ces behind the engines and between the two wheels they drew in the immigrant deck pa.s.sengers, so mutely sad for the distant homes behind them, so mutely hopeful and fearful for the distant homes before. And on the deck above these exiles they took in the cabin pa.s.sengers--ladies who told their lives over their knitting or embroidery in floods of lamplight and the cus.h.i.+oned ease of feminine seclusion; children here and there battling against sleep or yielding to it in stateroom berths; the ruder s.e.x at card-tables in the forward cabin--from which, oddly, the twins were refraining; three or four tipplers at the fragrant bar, and one or two readers under the chandeliers. Outside, scores of non-readers sat in tilted chairs, their heels breast-high on the guard-rails and their minds tobacco-lulled to a silent content with the breezy lanternlight of the boiler deck, the occasional pa.s.sing of a downward-bound flatboat or steamer, the gradual overhauling of some craft that had backed out earlier at New Orleans, and the wide, slow oscillations of the unbounded starlight overhanging land and flood.

These too the young pair included. All these were parts of their blended consciousness as the alert Ramsey noticed that the grandfather's talk had turned upon Hugh and boats.

"He and the _Quakeress_ were the same age," he was remarking, when Ramsey's laugh jingled.

"Both," she broke in, "built the same year!" Her curls switched backward at the old man. She faced Hugh. "Where were you born?"

But he only signed for her not to interrupt. In the dim light she made a wry face at him and jingled again while her mother said: "On the _Quakerezz_!--end of trial trip!--whiles landing at New Orleans! Me, I was there, ad the landingg! Yes! on the boat of my 'usband, the _Conqueror_--also trial trip--arrive' since only one hour biffo'!"

Ramsey, with her eyes roaming over Hugh, faintly kept up her laugh, yet parallel with it her mother managed to continue: "Yes, that was in eighteen-thirty-three, Janawary. Because that was the winter when Jackson he conquer' Clay in the election and conquer' Calhoun in the nullification, and tha'z the cause why my 'usband he name' his boat the _Conqueror_. Ah, veree well I rimember that; how the _Quakerezz_ she came cre-eepingg in, out of that fog, an' like the fog so still an'

white, cloze aggains' the _Conqueror_. And the firz' news they pazz----"

The old nurse reappeared, laid thin shawls on the mother and daughter, and sat down on the deck close below Ramsey.

"Firz' news they pazz," resumed the speaker, "'tis that Captain Courteney he's got with him his wife, from Philadelphia, and----"

Ramsey broke in merrily: "Was _she_ the Quakeress? Was the _Quakeress_ named for her?"

"Yes, and she's juz' have, they say, a li'l' son! An' my 'usband he di'n' like that! Because----"

"But you had three little girls!" said Ramsey.

"Girl', they di'n' count! Because those girl', you know, they can' never run those steam_boat_'."

"I don't see why," said Ramsey. Hugh might sit silent if he chose; her silent sitting was over.

"They di'n' count," repeated the lady. "And so my 'usband he di'n' want those Courteney' to be ahead of those Hayle' in having boys!"

"He little knew what was coming," said Ramsey, and wondered why the remark was ignored, especially when----

"Me," said the pretty matron, "I was nearly ready to 'ave those twin', but Gideon Hayle he di'n' know they was goin' be twin', an' he di'n'

know those twin' goin' be boys!" She gently laughed. The daughter stared as if in no light--or shade--could those twins be a laughing matter, but the mother spoke on gayly: "Never I 'ear my 'usband swear so hard--an'

so manny way'--like that day--at everything--everybody. Not because that li'l babee--if that be all; but because he see that _boat_, that she's the mo' fine boat, that _Quakerezz_, an' when they ripport her run from Loui'ville, he's already affraid--to hisseff--that she's goin' to be the mo' fas'."

"And was she?" asked the girl.

"Barely," said the grandfather. "It took years to prove it and by that time your father had built another boat."

"The _Chevalier_!" she exclaimed.

"Yes, which beat the _Quakeress_ once or twice nearly every season until the _Quakeress_ burned."

"Burned!" cried Ramsey, while Hugh, stirred to rise, yet remained. "Was it the _Quakeress_ that--?" But the old man was telling earlier history and she sank repiningly in her seat. "You're going backward," she softly whined.

"In 'sixteen," he said, "I built the _Huntress_, and----"

"We already know about that," sighed Ramsey, bracing her feet in old Joy's hands. "I know it from old nursie."

"Ramsey!" murmured her mother.

"In 'seventeen," said the chronicler, "Miss Ramsey's grandfather built the _Hunter_. In 'twenty he built the _Charioteer_----"

"Ain't we ever going to hear about the burning?" laughingly whimpered the girl, but the narrator kept on:

"In 'twenty-one I built the _Shepherdess_----"