_ CHAPTER XXVIII. WORDS AND THE "WESTWOOD"
Down on the roof, while Ramsey's mother started with the physician around the skylights for the texas, and Hugh and Gilmore conversed with the captain, Mrs. Gilmore, her hands on Ramsey, said to madame:
"I want her now, to begin to make ready for tomorrow evening. My dear"--to the girl--"I've a dozen dresses that will become you better than this one."
"Long?" cried Ramsey. "I'll take the lot!" She felt Hugh distantly looking and listening.
"We won't trade on Sunday," laughed Mrs. Gilmore; "but you mustn't"--scanning her approvingly--"ever put on a short dress again."
"Ho-oh, I never will!" said Ramsey, with a toss meant for Hugh, who went by, hurrying aft to meet a newcomer. She started after him. Madame Hayle, in that direction, had gone into the sick-room, whence Ramsey's brother Julian, with barely a word to his mother, had come out. Stepping down into the narrow walk between the roofs of cabin and pantry and glancing over his shoulder upon the company about the bell, he winced at sight of his sister's attire. Yet he kept his course and was well started aft before he saw that he was being met by some one in the narrow way, and by whom but Marburg. It was that alien whom Hugh was hastening to reach and on whom Ramsey was staring. He had come up from the engine room through the steward's department, by the unguarded route which Basile's ascent had revealed, and now came face to face with a foe where there was room only for friends to meet and pass. So said the eyes of each to each, but just then a quick footfall on the cabin roof, behind and somewhat above him, caused Julian to face round and he confronted Hugh.
"Mr. Hayle," was Hugh's word, "what will you have, sir?"
"Nothing, sir, of you! What will _you_ have of _me_, sir?"
Ramsey glided by both and halted before the exile, whose scowl vanished in a look so grateful and supplicating that her words, clearly meant to justify his presence, caught in her throat: "What will you--have, sir? My mother?--back again?--and the doctor?"
"Yes," he replied, and then added in German with an anguish of gesture which was ample interpretation, "yes, for _my_ mother! for my little brother! Ah, God! he is not dead! He is yet alive! His arms are as supple as _these_. There is color still in his cheeks!"
She stood dumb with horror. Yet she woke to action as, close beside her, she heard her brother snarl at Hugh:
"I'll go where I please! Who stops me, God pity him!"
She dropped nimbly from the skylights' overhang to the alien's level and with looks as beseeching as his waved him back a step. Then with the same mute entreaty she faced Julian and Hugh. But there was a ludicrous contrast, visible to all, between Hugh's phlegm and her brother's pomp, and by a flash of feminine instinct she divined the best mood with which to match it. Grimly elated, Hugh saw what was coming. Julian saw, and groaned a wearied wrath. The captain, the commodore--for the commodore had returned--the Gilmores, the Yazoo couple, the pilots overhead, all waited with lively and knowing gaze. She went limp, hid her face, swayed, sank to one knee, and filled the whole width of the narrow passage with arms and draperies, the meanwhile breaking into a laugh so wholly soliloqual that the two players became learners. But again she sprang erect and had hardly thrown her curls back from her blushing face when her mother, the bishop, and the doctor stepped from the sick-room, and madame addressed the immigrant:
"Ah, ritturn, if you ple-ease. Me, I am ritturning!"
"Yes," chimed the bishop and the doctor; "yes, at once!" and the exile, with pleading looks to Ramsey, to the others by turn and to her again, went below. Madame and the physician began to follow.
"How's Lucian?" called Ramsey after them.
"Getting well," replied both. They passed behind the wheel-house and only the pilots knew that at its corner Madame Hayle stopped where she could still see and hear. All others kept their eyes on Julian, who was in a redder heat than ever, and on Hugh, who was addressing him in a depth of tone that amused the Gilmores almost as keenly as it did Ramsey, who had rejoined them at his back. Suddenly he faced around.
"If Miss Hayle," he said, "would as soon go below----"
Miss Hayle sang her reply, bugled it: "She would no-ot."
Hugh stepped down into her brother's path and faced him again: "You have written your father a letter----"
Julian's head flew up but bent in slow avowal.
"To be put aboard the _Antelope_," pursued Hugh----
The head went higher: "Well, sir?"
"To outrun this boat."
"And--if--I--have, sir?"
"Why, yes," murmured the squire's brother-in-law and sister, to the Gilmores, "suppose he has?"
"So have I," said Hugh to Julian. He glanced up to the Yazoo couple and then to the bishop self-isolated near the sick-room door. Ramsey and the couple laughed. Hugh turned her way again: "If Miss Hayle----"
"She wouldn't," said Ramsey, laughing more.
"Well, sir!" drawled the waiting Julian, to Hugh.
Hugh waved a hand toward the bishop: "That gentleman has risked his life for your sick brother."
"Yes," said Ramsey. The bishop scowled up the river. Julian scowled at Hugh.
"Well, sir?" he once more challenged.
"He was told he was wanted as a minister," said Hugh.
"_Well, sir?_"
"He was wanted merely to get your letter off secretly."
"You lie!"
"Oh!" sighed the Yazoo pair. Ramsey shrank upon Mrs. Gilmore.
"Not at all," said a quiet voice overhead and the eyes of Julian, blazing upward, met Watson's blazing down.
"Come," said the player's wife to Ramsey, "come away."
"I won't," tearfully laughed Ramsey, and Mrs. Gilmore and the squire's sister had to laugh with her.
"The lie," said Hugh, "will keep. Your letter is such that the bishop declines to touch it."
The bishop swelled. Julian recoiled and, glancing behind him, confronted his mother.
"My son," she began, but he whirled back to Hugh.
"You keyhole spy!" he wailed; "you eavesdropping viper!"
Ramsey came tiptoeing along the edge of the pantry roof to light down between them but he imperiously motioned her off, still glaring at Hugh and gnawing his lip with chagrin. "Oh, never mind!" was all he could choke out; "never you mind!" He ceased again, to catch what Hugh was replying to him. Said Hugh:
"I'll take your letter and send it with my own."
"No, sir! No, you grovelling sneak!"
"Mais, yass!" called Madame Hayle from her place, and Ramsey laughed from hers, but a new voice arrested every one's attention. The bishop wheeled round to it with an exclamation of dismay that was echoed even by Julian. In the sick-room door stood Lucian, half dressed and feebly clinging to the jamb.
"Let him do it, Jule!" he cried in a tremulous thin voice. "Take the whelp at his word! Don't you see? Don't you see, Jule? We'll have him in a nine hole. It'll be hell for him if he puts it through and worse if he slinks it!" He tried to put off the bishop's sustaining arm.
A light of discernment filled Julian's face. There was no time to ponder. He had always trusted Lucian for the cunninger insight and did it now though Lucian lay in the bishop's arms limp and senseless. He drew forth the letter. Gayly stooping over the skylights Ramsey reached for it and passed it to Hugh. Julian sprang up to the bishop, who had borne Lucian into the sick-room and now filled its door again, waving a cheerful reassurance.
"A mere swoon," said the bishop; "all right again."
"It may be all right up there," the squire's sister began to say to the actor's wife--and hushed. But Ramsey had heard, as she watched her mother hurry below to the young Marburg brother lying as limp and faintly pink in death as her brother up here in life; heard, and thought of the perils in store for Hugh and his kin and her and hers unless this sweet, wise mother could charm them away as sunlight charms away pestilence. Mr. Gilmore called her:
"Come, we've lots to do."
But how could one come just then? A slight turn of the boat's head was putting Natchez Island close on her larboard bow and, seven miles away, bringing hazily into sight Natchez herself, both on her bluffs and "under-the-hill." Nay, more; abreast the _Votaress_ was another fine boat. The _Westwood_, she was named. Her going was beautiful, yet the _Votaress_ was gradually passing her. The Yazoo pair knew her well. When they made salute toward two men who stood near her forward skylights, one of them returned it.
"Why should he be so solemn?" asked the wife.
"Why shouldn't he?" laughed Ramsey.
"Because he's a mere passenger, on his wedding tour."
"Humph!" said Ramsey. "Weddings are solemn things. Is that other man the captain?" she asked the husband.
"No, I regret to say, he's only her first clerk."
"Why should you regret to say it?" inquired the girl; but the wife, too, had a question:
"Do you think there's anything wrong?"
"N-no, oh, no."
The _Westwood's_ clerk made a sign to Captain Courteney. The captain glanced up to Watson, and the two boats, still at full speed, began to draw sidewise together. But Ramsey's liveliest interest was in the _Westwood's_ crew, who, far below about her capstan, were paying their compliments to the newer, larger, speedier boat in song and refrain with stately wavings and dippings of ragged hats and naked black arms. Now the boats' guards almost touched and their commanders spoke so quietly together that she did not hear their words. But she noted the regretful air with which John Courteney shook his head to the _Westwood's_ clerk and then to the passenger, and the _Westwood_ began again to drop behind. Hugh came near, paused, and glanced around.
"Looking for the commodore?" she asked.
"I thought you went down with Mrs. Gilmore," he replied, "to rehearse your part in the play."
"Commodore's down on the lower deck," she said; "freight deck--with mom-a--and the bishop."
Hugh showed astonishment. "The bishop?"
"Yes, mom-a made him go." She laughed. "Some of the sick folks down there are Protestants and were threatening to turn Catholic. Is anybody sick aboard the _Westwood_?"
"No."
"Then where's her captain?"
Hugh made no reply but to meet her steady gaze with his own till she asked in a subdued voice: "Cholera?"
Hugh nodded. Each knew the other was aware of the song that floated up after them from the boat behind.
"What did the bridegroom want?" asked the girl.
"Wanted to give us a thousand dollars to take his bride--with him or without him--aboard the _Votaress_."
"But when he heard how much worse off we are--" prompted she. "Yes."
"But, Mr. Hugh----"
"Yes?"
"Anyhow, this boat hasn't got that boat's trouble!"
"No," said Hugh, and knew they were both thinking of his father. Together they stood hearkening to the last of the _Westwood's_ song:
"'Ef you git dah befo' I do--
_O, high-low!_--
Jest tell 'em I'm a-comin' too--
_John's gone to high-low!_'" _