Gideon's Band Part 43

"Basile says there's another thing you suffer from."

"'Suffer'? From what do I 'suffer'?"

"From everybody else on the boat having a better chance to do things--big things--than you have."

He smiled again. "If I did, no one should know it; least of all you."

She ignored the last clause. "Aha! I said so. I told him--and mammy Joy told him--there's nothing bigger than to wait your turn and _then take it_. And there ain't--there isn't, is there?"

"Well--even that can be small. Nothing a man is big enough for looks big to him."

"Hoh!--after he's done it," laughed Ramsey.

"True--" said Hugh reflectively, "or suffered it," and both of them began to see that we can rarely lift more than our one corner of the whole truth at a time. "In your way," he added, still musing, "you're larger than I."

"Oh, I'm no--such--thing!" Her speech was soft, yet she looked up warily to Watson's pilot-house window, but Watson too thoroughly approved to be looking down. "I'm not half or third or quarter as large." She eagerly turned his attention up the river. Visible only by the lights of her cabin and the sparks from her unseen chimneys, a boat was coming round the next bend. As she entered the reach and breasted the breeze which so calmly accompanied the _Votaress_, her two spangled plumes of smoke swept straight astern as if two comets raced with her, or----

"The Golden Locks of Berenice," whispered Ramsey.

"Come," Hugh softly responded. The _Votaress_ had signalled the usual pa.s.sage to starboard and unless they went forward the s.h.i.+ning spectacle would at once be lost. As they gained the front of the texas the distant craft, happening to open a fire-door, cast a long fan of red light ahead of her, suddenly showing every detail of her white forecastle, illumining her pathway on the yellow waters and revealing in their daylight green the willows of an island close beyond. Then the furnace was shut and again her fair outlines were left to the imagination, except for the prismatic twinkle and glow of her cabin lights.

"That was like you when you laugh," murmured Hugh, and before she could parry she was smitten again by an innocent random shot from the darkness round the bell.

"Do you make her out, Mr. Watson?" asked Hugh's father, and she flinched as if Watson were peering down on her.

"Yes, sir," said the pilot, "she's Hayle's _Wild Girl_."

Not waiting to hear that she was known by her "front skylights standin'

so fur aft of her chimbleys," Ramsey wheeled to fly. But instantly she recovered and went with severe decorum, saying quiet nothings to Hugh as he followed, until at the sick-room door again she turned.

"I'm willing he should help us, Mr. Hugh, if mom-a and Basile are. I'll send him word by mammy Joy. Mr. Hugh--what is it he wants to know about the twins?"

Hugh was taken aback. "Why, it's nothing--now. It was as pure nonsense as those verses. Ask him. He can tell if he chooses; I can't." There was a pause. Her eyes gave him lively attention, but one ear was bent to the door.

"I hope Basile is better," he added.

"I'm sure he is; he's so much quieter." She felt a stir of conscience, loitering thus, yet--"Mr. Hugh, do you think diffidence is the same as modesty?"

"Certainly not."

"I'm--" She meditated.... "I'm glad of that.... I never was diffident a moment in my life."

"You never had need to be," said Hugh very quietly.

"They go together, don't they, diffidence and modesty?"

"Not as often as diffidence and conceitedness."

"Why, Mr. Hugh!"

"One thing that makes me so silent is my conceit."

"Oh, you! you're not conceited at all! You're modest! You little know how great you are! You're a wonder!" Her tone was candor itself till maiden craft added, while she tinkled her softest and keenest: "You're a poet!"

With a gay wave, which dismissed him so easily that she resented his going, she turned, stepped warily into the cramped room, and stood transfixed with remorse for her tardiness and appalled and heart-wrung.

The foot of the berth was by the door. There old Joy stood silently weeping. At its head knelt her mother in prayer and on it lay her playmate brother peacefully gasping out his life. A flash of retrospection told her he must have had the malady long before he had confessed it and that something--something earlier than her singing--yes, and later--not twins nor Gilmores nor river--oh, something, what was it?--had kept her--these two long, long days--blind.

"Ah, you! _you_!" she dumbly cried, all at once aflame with the Hayle gift for invective. "You stone image! 'To help you,' indeed! _You_! As if you--as if I--I won't, you born tyrant! 'Help you'--against my own kin! I will not--ever again. We're _quits_ for good and all."

XLII

AGAINST KIN

"Ramsey," said the boy, his voice gone to a shred, "you're good--to come back in--in time. Ain't you going--to laugh? It'd be all right. Oh, sis'"--the sunken eyes lighted up--"it's come to me, sissy, it's come.

I've got religion, Ramsey. I'm going straight to the arms of Jesus.

Sissy dear, I wish"--he waited for strength--"I could see the--twins--just a minute or two----"

"Why, you shall, honey. I'll go bring 'em."

"Wish you would--and Hugh Courteney. It's the last----"

"Honey boy, th'ain't room for so many at once. And it ain't your last anything; you' going to get well."

His eyes closed, his brows knit. The tearful mother rose and looked at her. The glance was kind, yet remorse tore the girl's heart again. "Go,"

said her mother. "Joy, she'll go with you. Bring the three."

"My last"--the boy whispered on--"last chance--to do some'--something worthy of"--he faintly smiled to his mother--"of Gideon's Band."

The door opened and closed and the two were alone. At his sign she knelt, took his clammy hand, and bent close that he might flutter out his hurried words with least effort.

"She sang it finely!" he whispered. "She'd 'a' known we heard it if she'd 'a' thought. Wish you'd sing a verse of it. It's a hymn, you know--or was. The chorus is--yet. Anyhow, it's our song. Oh, I'd like to live on and be a real true Hayle--a Gideon! I hope--hope Hugh Courteney'll--live. Just think! he was on the _Quakeress_ when Uncle Dan--.... He's going to do big things some day. Mother--want to tell you something." She bent closer. He whispered on:

"I wish Hugh Courteney'd live and--marry sis'."

His eyes reclosed and the mother drew back, but he whispered on with lids unlifted: "Sing--a verse or two--or just the chorus, won't you?"

As softly as to an infant fallen asleep she sang, in her Creole accent, with eyes streaming:

"Do you billong to Gideon' ban'?

Yere's my 'eart an' yere's my 'an'."

Outside, meantime, before old Joy had quite left the closed door, another, the second aft of it, opened and the texas tender stepped out.

A fellow servant within shut it, and he started for a near-by stair, but checked up, amazed, to let Ramsey hasten on for the same point.

But Ramsey halted. "How's the bishop?" she asked him.