Gideon's Band Part 62

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de wile white roses grow, (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, de fust of all de row, (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, eyes sweeteh dan de doe, (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de white magnonia blow', (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, an' awake up, fiddle an' bow, (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, we'll a-dance de heel an' toe, (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, to de tchune o' Jump, Jim Crow, (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, come, de pootiess gal I know, On de finess boat dat eveh float'

In de O--hi--o, De Mas--sis--sip--pi aw de O--hi--o.

LIX

"CONCLUSIVELY"

Alone in the wide light of a harvest-moon that wrapped all sh.o.r.es in deep shadow and turned the mid-channel to silver, Hugh and Ramsey stood at the low front rail of the texas roof.

There were but few to see them, but every eye in range was aware of her and of a refined simplicity of dress adorning a figure whose pliant grace was the finis.h.i.+ng touch to her joyous erectness. Hugh's gaze was frankly on her, and his mind on the first night he had ever seen her, when, with her hair wind-tossed in loose curls, she had stood at this spot on the _Votaress_ and in carelessness of a whole world had sung "The Lone Starry Hours."

Equally distant from them were the pilot-house behind and above and the bell down forward on the skylight. To right and left on a thwarts.h.i.+p line just back of them towered the chimneys softly giving out their t.i.tanic respirations. Watson, though off watch, was up at the wheel beside his partner, pretending not to see the two beneath. In other words, he was still, after eight and a half years, "in the game." The Gilmores were with him, both in body and spirit.

Out forward of the bell, below it on the main roof, one of the boat's builders, responsible for her till she should reach New Orleans, sat in the captain's chair.

"After eight years and a half," Hugh himself had gravely begun to say to Ramsey, when two men, "California" and a fellow smoker, sauntered across the skylight roof close below. Gilmore, up in the pilot-house, was annoyed.

"Our poet," he murmured to his wife, "will spill the fat into the fire yet, if we don't stop him."

But the Californian had purposely enc.u.mbered himself with this stranger to make it plain that, hover as he might, he waived all claim to her attention. What better could a man do? And now he forbore even to look her way. The abstention was as marked as any look could have been. As they pa.s.sed, Hugh was silent, but Ramsey spoke, her speech a light blend of response and evasion.

"On the _Votaress_," she said, "the front of the texas didn't stand out forward of the chimneys, like this."

"Doesn't this make a handsomer boat," the lover asked, "seen either aboard or from the sh.o.r.e?"

Ramsey said yes, she had noticed the improvement from the Memphis wharf-boat. "She was a splendid sight; yes, out in the stream, just before her wheels first stopped. At least she was to any one loving boats and the river."

"Then you haven't changed?" asked Hugh, not for information but in the tone that always meant so much beneath the speech.

Her answer was merely to meet his gaze with a gentle steadfastness, each knowing that the other's mind was overcircling all the years that had divided them. Through those years they had exchanged no spoken or written word. Yet according to Watson true love finds ways, large love large ways, pure love pure ways. Sometimes love's friends really help; help find ways, or keep ways found; even make chutes and cut-offs.

Gilmore, Watson, and the Vicksburg merchant happened to be Odd Fellows, and the Gilmores, to whom letter-writing was, next to their profession, their main pleasure, had been a sort of clearing-house for Friends.h.i.+p, Love, and Truth--and especially for social news--to all the _Votaress's_ old coterie; Hugh, the pairs of Milliken's Bend, Vicksburg, and Carthage, the boat's family, Phyllis, Madame Hayle, even old Joy--with madame for amanuensis--and Ramsey herself. She and Hugh, had followed every step in each other's course, upheld by a simplicity of faith in friends.h.i.+p, love, and truth, which hardly needed to ask the one question abundantly answered by this steadfastness of eye.

Now she looked away to the moon's path on the river, and the question of change came back from her: "Have you?"

"Only to grow."

"You have grown," she said, "every way."

"And you," he replied, "every beautiful way. I have just said so to your father."

Her response came instantly: "How did that happen?"

"We made it happen."

She looked at him again. "We," of course, meant "I." Truly she had grown every beautiful way, but it was yet as wonderful as ever to stand, saying what she had said, hearing what she was hearing, eye to eye, open soul to open soul, with one who could make words--words at any rate--happen between himself and Gideon Hayle. She looked this time not alone into his eyes but on all his unhandsome countenance, and in a surviving upflare of her younger days' extravagance thought whether, among all time's heroes of the world's waters, there had ever been one too great for Hugh Courteney's face. So looking she thrilled with the belief that there was nothing such men had ever done which this one might not some day, the right day, equal or surpa.s.s.

Again she looked away and as she looked the hovering Californian murmured to his new-found confidant:

"You can't see the glory of her in this light nohow, unless you'd seen her already in the full blaze of the cabin, or of broad day, with the light in that red hair. If you had you wouldn't need even the moonlight now. You'd only need to know she was there and you'd see her without looking. I seen her in her first long dress, jest a-learning to fly and some folks showing no more poetic vision than to call her 'almost plain.' I saw the loveliness a-coming, like daybreak in the mountains.

And _he_ saw it. I saw he saw it. And now? I tell you, sir, her brow is like the snowdrift, her throat is like the swan, and her face it is the fairest--I never seen Annie Laurie, but if she's better looking or sweeter behaving--I'd rather not. Anyhow they're enough alike to be sisters. I've writ a poem on this one. Like to show--hmm? Hold on. It don't quite suit me yet but--what's your hurry? When it does, I Joe!

it'll be a ripsnorter. I've worked eight year and a half on it and they say genius is jest a trick o' takin' infinitessimal pains.... No, I'm not sleepy. Reckon I'll go up to the pilot-house. So long. Pleasant dreams."

While he so spoke Ramsey had said: "Here comes another boat, down in the next bend. Or is she in the chute?"

"The chute," replied Hugh. "That's the old _Antelope_."

"Ah, up and running again! I know all about you and the _Votaress_ saving her people that awful night she sank."

"Who told you?"

"Oh, a dozen, at a dozen times; but the best was Phyllis, writing to us."

"Phyllis behaved heroically that night; made up for all the past--though really she'd done that before."

"I'm glad you feel that way," murmured Ramsey and suddenly asked: "Why did you take my father to your room just now?"

"To show him the plans for another boat."

"Humph!" What crystalline honesty was in his answers, she pondered. They were as prompt as a mirror's.

"Rivals," she remarked, "don't ordinarily show plans."

"Your father and I are not ordinary rivals."

What did that mean? Her, and not mere boats' plans? She did not look at him this time. Like "California" she could see without looking. "Think I'll rejoin the Gilmores," she sighed, as certain couples came up to see the _Antelope_ go by. She feared a recurrence of "'Lindy Lowe." On the way to the pilot-house she leisurely inquired:

"Do you think you'll ever build a finer boat than this?"

"Yes, and larger, and faster."

"Not this season?"