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for my duplicity, my inconstancy—”
“But you do not reproach yourself,” with a quick, searching glance.
“No, no, I was not inconstant. Only then I had not met you. But I have
caused him unhappiness, and a sort of humiliation among his friends, who
consider that I threw him over at the last minute, and I cannot bear to own
anything that he accounts his. I don’t want his land. I don’t want his house.
I wish you would deed it all back to him.”
“You tiresome little dunce!” he exclaimed, laughing. “It is one of the
largest plantations in acreage, cleared and tillable, in Mississippi, and I
really should not like to say how much it is worth, especially now with the
price of cotton on the bounce. People would think I was crazy if I did such a
mad thing as to deed it back. I should be unfitted for any part in the
business world. No one would trust me for a moment. And apart from my
own interest, consider our son. What would he think of me, of you, when he
comes to man’s estate, if we should alienate for a whim that fine property,
of which he might one day stand in dire need. Change is the order of the
times. Edward Floyd-Rosney, Junior, may not have a walk over the course
as his father did.”
“But, Edward, we are rich—”
“And so would the Ducies be, by hook or by crook, if they knew what is
comfortable.” He laughed prosperously. He was tired of the subject, and
was turning away as he drew forth his cigar-case. He was good to himself,
and fostered his taste for personal luxury, even in every minute manner that
would not be ridiculously obtrusive as against the canons of good taste. The
ring on the third finger of his left hand might seem, to the casual glance of
the uninitiated, the ordinary seal so much affected, but a connoisseur would
discern in it a priceless intaglio. The match-box which he held as he walked
away along the guards was of solid gold, richly chased. His clothes were the
masterpieces of a London tailor of the first order, but so decorous and
inconspicuous in their fine simplicity that but for their enhancement of his
admirable figure and grace of movement their quality and cost might have
passed unnoticed.
Paula looked after him with an intent and troubled gaze, her heart
pulsing tumultuously, her brain on fire. It would never have been within her
spiritual compass to make a conscious sacrifice of self for a point of ethics.
She could not have relinquished aught that she craved, or that was
significant in its effects. To own Duciehurst would make no item of
difference in the luxury of their life,—to give it up could in no way reduce
their consequence or splendor of appointment. To her the acquisition of a
hundred thousand dollars, more or less, signified naught in an estate of
millions. They were rich, they had every desire of luxury or ostentation
gratified,—what would they have more? But that this prosperity should be
fostered, aggrandized by the loss of the man whom she had causelessly
jilted, wounded her pride. It was peculiarly lacerating to her sensibilities
that her husband should own Randal Ducie’s ancestral estate, bought under
the disastrous circumstances of a forced sale for a mere trifle of its value,
and that she should be enriched by this almost thievish chance. She could
not endure that it should be Randal Ducie at last from whom she should
derive some part of the luxury which she had craved and for which she had
bartered his love—that he should be bravely struggling on, bereft of his
inheritance, in that sane and simple sphere to which she had looked back
last night as another and a native world, from which she was exiled to this
realm of alien and flamboyant splendor, that suddenly had grown strangely
garish and bitter to the taste as she contemplated it. What, indeed, did it
signify to her?—She had no part, no choice in dispensing her husband’s
wealth. Everything was brought to her hand, regardless of her wish or
volition, as if she were a puppet. Even her charities, her appropriate pose as
a “lady bountiful,” were not spontaneous. “I think you had better subscribe
two hundred dollars to the refurnishing of the Old Woman’s Home, Paula,
—it is incumbent in your position,” he would say, or “I made a contribution
of five hundred in your name to the Children’s Hospital,—it is expected that
in your position you would do something.” Her position—this made the
exaction, not charity, not humanity, not generosity. But for the mention in
the local journals the institutions of the city would never have known the
lavish hand of one of its wealthiest and most prominent citizens. The money
would, doubtless, do good even bestowed in this spirit, but the gift had no
blessing for the giver, and she felt no glow of gratulation. Indeed, it was not
a gift,—it was a tax paid on her position. More than once when she had
advocated a donation on her own initiative he had promptly negatived the
idea. “No use in that,” he would declare, or the story of destitution and
disaster was a “fake.” These instances were not calculated to illustrate her
position. She could not endure that it should levy its tribute on Randal
Ducie’s future, and she noted the significant fact that always hitherto in
mentioning the recent acquisition under his kinsman’s will her husband had
avoided the name of the estate which must have acquainted her with its
former ownership.
 CHAPTER VI
The weather had been vaguely misting all the dreary morning. Through
a medium not rain, yet scarcely of the tenuity of vapor, Paula had gazed at
the tawny flow of the swift river, the limited perspective of the banks, the
tall looming of the forests, the slate-tinted sky, all dim and dull like a
landscape in outline half smudged in with a stump. Suddenly this meager
expression of the world beyond was withdrawn from contemplation. In the
infinitely dull silence the fall of tentative drops on the hurricane deck was
presently audible, and, all at once, there gushed forth from the low-hung
clouds a tremendous down-pour of torrents beneath which the Cherokee
Rose quivered. Paula turned quickly to the door of the saloon, which barely
closed upon her before the guards were swept by floods of water.
The whole interior resounded with the beat of scurrying footsteps fleeing
to shelter from this abrupt outbreak of the elements. Squads of the
passengers, or, sometimes, a single fugitive came at intervals bursting into
the saloon, gasping with the effects of surprise, and the effort at speed,
laughing, flushed, agitated, recounting their narrow escapes from drenching
or submergence. Two or three, indeed, had caught a ducking and were
repairing to their staterooms for dry clothing. There was much sound of
activity from the boiler deck as the roustabouts ran boisterously in and out
of the rain, busied in protecting freight or in sheltering the few head of
stock. The whole episode seemed charged with a cheerful sense of a jolt of
the monotony.
A group of gentlemen who did not accompany ladies or who were not
acquainted with those on board gathered in the forward cabin, but Ducie sat
silent and listless in one of the arm-chairs in the saloon. Apparently, he
desired to show the Floyd-Rosneys that he perceived no cause for
embarrassment in their society and had no intention by withdrawing of
ameliorating any awkwardness which his presence might occasion to them.
There were very acceptable and cozy suggestions here. Hildegarde Dean sat
at the piano with the two old soldiers beside her. The blind Major, who had
a sweet tenor voice, albeit hopelessly attenuated now, some tones in the
upper register cracked beyond repair in this world, would sing sotto voce a
stanza of an old war song, utterly unknown to the girl of the present day,
and Hildegarde, listening attentively, would improvise an accompaniment
with refrain and ritornello in a vague tentative way like one recalling a lost
memory. Suddenly she would throw up her head, her hands would crash out
the confident tema, Colonel Kenwynton’s powerful bass tones would boom
forth, and the old blind Major’s tremulous voice would soar on the wings of
his enthusiasm, and his memories of the days of yore. Meantime, the girl’s
fresh young face, between the two old withered masks, would glow, the
impersonation of kindly reverent youth and sweet peace and the sentiment
of harmony.
It was pleasant to listen as song succeeded song. Hildegarde’s mother,
soft-eyed, soft-mannered and graceful, still youthful of aspect, smiled in her
sympathetic accord. Two or three of the more elderly passengers now and
again recognized a strain that brought back a long vanished day. An old
lady had taken out her fancy work and, as she plied her deft needle in the
intricate pattern of the Battenberg, she nodded her head appreciatively to
the rhythm of the music, and looked as if she had no special desire for her
journey’s end or a life beyond the sand-bar.
When the répertoire was exhausted and silence ensued the blank was
presently filled by childish voices and laughter. Marjorie Ashley had begun
to lead little Ned Floyd-Rosney about, introducing him to the various
passengers disposed on the sofas and rocking-chairs of the saloon. In this
scion of the Floyd-Rosney family seemed concentrated all its geniality. He
was a whole-souled citizen and not only accepted courtesies with jovial
urbanity but himself made advances. He had, indeed, something the tastes
of a roisterer, and his father regarded, with open aversion, his disposition to
carouse with his fellow-passengers. In his arrogant exclusiveness Floyd-
Rosney revolted from the promiscuous attentions lavished on the child. He
resented the intimacy which the affable infant had contracted with Marjorie
Ashley, the two children rejoicing extremely when the old nurse had been
summoned to her breakfast, thus consigning him in the interval to the care
of his mother, and rendering him more accessible to the blandishments of
his new friend. Floyd-Rosney felt that it was not appropriate that he should
be thrust forward in this unseemly publicity thus scantily attended. It was
the habit of the family to travel in state, with Floyd-Rosney’s valet, the
lady’s maid, a French bonne for the boy, in addition to the old colored nurse
in whom Mrs. Floyd-Rosney had such confidence that she would not
transfer the child wholly to other tendance. The occasion of this journey,
however, did not admit of such a retinue. It was a visit of condolence which
they had made to an aunt of Mr. Floyd-Rosney who had lost her son,
formerly a very intimate friend of his own. She was an aged lady of limited
means and a modest home. To descend upon a household of simple
habitudes, already disorganized by recent illness and death, with a troop of
strange servants to be cared for and accommodated, was manifestly so
inappropriate that even so selfish a man as Floyd-Rosney did not entertain
the idea, although his wife received in his querulous asides the full benefit
of all the displeasure and inconvenience that he experienced from “having
to jaunt about the world with no attendant but the child’s nurse.” The nurse,
“Aunt Dorothy,” as in the southern fashion she was respectfully called, had,
perhaps, found company at breakfast agreeable to her of her own race and
condition, and her absence was prolonged, which fact gave Marjorie Ashley
the opportunity to make again the round of the group of passengers in the
saloon, cajoling little Ned Floyd-Rosney to show them how he pronounced
Miss Dean’s Christian name. At every smiling effort she would burst into
gurgles of redundant laughter, so funny did “Miff Milzepar’ ” for “Miss
Hildegarde” sound in her ears. He was conscious of a very humorous effect
as he repeatedly made the attempt to pronounce this long word under
Marjorie’s urgency, gazing up the while with his big blue eyes brimful of
laughter, his carmine tinted lips ajar, showing his two rows of small white
teeth, his pink cheeks continually fluctuating with a deeper flush, and his
beguiling dimples on display. All the ladies and several of the gentlemen
caught him up and kissed him ecstatically; so enticing a specimen of
joyous, sweet-humored, fresh-faced childhood he presented. His mother’s
maternal pride glowed in her smile as she noted and graciously accepted the
tribute, but Floyd-Rosney fumed indignant.
“Why don’t you stop that, Paula?” he growled in her ear as he cast
himself down on the sofa beside her. “All that kissing is dangerous.”
“It has been going on since the beginning of the world, accelerando, as
the opportunities multiply,” she retorted with her satiric little fleer.
“Be pleased to notice that I am serious,” he hissed in his gruff undertone.
“You can easily make me serious,—don’t over-exert yourself,” she said
with a sub-current of indignation.
She deprecated this public display of his surly mood toward her. There is
no woman, whether cherished or neglected, loving or indifferent, gifted or
deficient, who does not arrogate in public the scepter in her husband’s
affections, who is not wounded to the quick by the slightest suggestion of
reproof, or disparagement, or even the assertion of his independent
sentiment when brought to the notice of others. This is something that finds,
even in the most long-suffering wife, a keen new nerve to thrill with an
undreamed of pain. Paula’s cheek had flushed, her eyes were hot and
excited,—indeed, she did not lift them. She could not brook the indignity
that the coterie, most of all, Adrian Ducie, should see her husband at her
side with a stern and corrugated brow, whispering in her ear his angry
rebukes, commands, comments,—who could know what he might have to
say to her with that furious face and through his set teeth. The situation was
intolerable; her pride groped for a means of escape.
Then she did a thing that she felt afterward she could never have done
had she not in that moment unconsciously ceased to love her husband. She
shielded him no more as heretofore. She did not sacrifice herself, as was her
custom in a thousand small preferences. She did not assume his whim that
he might be satisfied, yet incur no responsibility or ridicule. On the
contrary, she led the laugh,—she delivered him, bound hand and foot, to the
scoffer.
She suddenly rose, and, with her graceful, willowy gait, walked
conspicuously down the middle of the saloon. “Ladies and gentlemen,
fellow travelers and companions in misery,” she said, swaying forward in
an exaggerated bow, “the heir to the throne must not be kissed. Mr. Floyd-
Rosney is a victim of the theory of osculatory microbes. You can only be
permitted to taste how sweet the baby is through his honeyed words and his
dulcet laughter. Why, he might catch a tobacco-bug from these human
smoke-stacks, or the chewing-gum habit from Marjorie Ashley. Therefore,
you had better turn him over to me and the same old germs he is
accustomed to when his muzzer eats him up.”
Forthwith she swung the big child up lightly in her, slender arms and,
with gurgles of laughter, devoured him with her lips, while he squealed, and
hugged, and kicked, and vigorously returned the kisses. Then she held him
head downward, with his curls dangling and apparently all the blood in his
body surging through the surcharged veins of his red face as he screamed in
delight.
 “Why, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,” said the wondering Marjorie volubly,
“everybody on the boat has been kissing Ned ever since he came aboard.
The mate says he is so sweet that he took Ned’s finger to stir his coffee with
and declared it needed no other sweetening, either long or short. And little
Ned believed him and sat on his knee while he ate his breakfast waiting to
stir his second cup for him. Ned has got a whole heap of microbes if kissing
gives ’em. Why, even that big deer-hound that is freighted to Vicksburg and
has been sitting the picture of despair and home-sickness, refusing to eat,—
dog-biscuit, or meat, or anything,—just tumbled little Ned over on the deck
and licked his face from his hair to his chin. And when he let Ned up at last
Ned just hugged the dog, and they kissed each other smack in the mouth.
Then they raced up and down the deck among the freight, playing hide and
seek till little Ned could hardly stir. Then the deer-hound ate his breakfast,
and is sitting down there right now, begging the leadsman for more.”
“Oh, well, then, let him go to his nurse and get his mouth washed out
with a solution of carbolic acid or some other anti-toxin,—perhaps that may
be a staggerer for the microbes.”
She let the child slide to the floor and then followed the tousled little
figure as it sped in a swift trot to her stateroom. He paused for her to turn
the bolt of the door, and as it opened he slipped under her arm and
disappeared, microbe-laden, within.
Her husband sat silent, dismayed, amazed, scarcely able to believe his
senses. He was of the type of human being who, subtly and especially fitted
to cause pain, was not himself adjusted to stoical suffering. He had a
thousand sensitive fibers. His pride burned within him like an actual fire.
While it was appropriate that in public appearances a wife should seem to
be the predominant consideration, there being more grace in a deferential
affectation than in a sultan-like swagger, this pose had such scant reality in
the domestic economy that when Paula presumed upon it in this radical
nonchalance, he was at once astounded, humiliated, and deeply wounded.
He found it difficult to understand so strange a departure from her habitual
attitude toward him, his relegation to the satiric methods with which she
favored the world at large, the merciless exposure to ridicule of his
remonstrance, which was, indeed, rather the vent of fretful ill-humor than
any genuine objection or fear of infection. The least exertion of feminine
tact in response to his wish would have quietly spirited the child away and
without comment ended these repugnant caresses of the little fellow by
strangers. Floyd-Rosney began to experience a growing conviction that it
all was the influence of the presence of Ducie. He had had some queer, not
unrelished, yet averse interest in studying in another man the face of the
lover whom he had supplanted. He could scarcely have brooked the sight of
the man she had loved, to tranquilly mark his facial traits, to appraise his
mental development, to speculate on his social culture and worldly
opportunities. But this was merely his image. Here was his twin brother, his
faithful facsimile. Floyd-Rosney had been surprised to note how handsome
he was, how obviously intelligent, how dashing. He had been flattered as
well,—this was no slight mark of honest preference on the part of Paula, no
mean rival he had put aside. He had felt a glow of added pride in the fact,
an accession of affection. He had noted the studied calm, the inexpressive
pose, the haughty simulation of indifference with which Ducie had
sustained the awkward contretemps of their meeting, the strain upon savoir
faire which the conventions imposed upon the incident.
And now, as he met Ducie’s eyes again, he perceived elation in them,
disproportionate, futile, but delighted. It was the most trivial of foolish
trifles, Floyd-Rosney said to himself, but this man had seen him set at
naught, put to the blush, held up to ridicule by his wife, airily satiric, utterly
unmindful of his dignity, nay, despising its tenuity, and leading the laugh at
his discomfiture.
Ducie caught himself with difficulty. He was so conscious of the
unguarded expression of his face, the look of relish, of triumph, of contempt
surprised in his eyes, that he made haste to nullify the effect. The whole
affair was the absent Randal’s, and he must take heed that he did not
interfere by word or look or in any subtle wise in what did not concern him,
—it was, indeed, of more complicated intent than heretofore he was aware.
He was a man of very definite tact but he had hardly realized the extent of
the endowment until that moment. He appreciated the subtle value of his
own impulse, as if it had been another’s, when he said, directly addressing
Floyd-Rosney, as if there had been only the element of good-natured
joviality in the episode, “I think we are all likely to encounter dangers more
formidable than microbes.—Have you any experience of cloud-bursts, Mr.
Floyd-Rosney? This fall of water is something prodigious, to my mind.”
In his personal absorptions Floyd-Rosney had not noticed the rain. “Is it
more than a ‘season,’ do you think?—the breaking up of this long drought?”
Floyd-Rosney quickly adopted the incidental tone.
 He was so essentially a proud man that he would fain think well of
himself. His credulity expanded eagerly to the hope that to others the
episode of the morning might seem, as apparently to this man, only a bit of
gay badinage, the feminine insolence of a much indulged wife to her lenient
lord and master. To himself it could not bear this interpretation, nor to her.
He could never forget nor forgive the impulse that informed it. But he was
quick to seize the opportunity to reinstate his self-possession, nay, the only
possibility to “save his face” and hold up his head. Such demands his
assuming dignity made on the deference of all about him that taken in this
wise the incident could hardly appear serious.
“If there were thunder and lightning it might seem the equinoctial,” said
Ducie, “although it is something late in the year.”
They had walked together down the saloon and to the forward part of the
cabin where they stood at the curving glass front looking out on vacancy.
The rain fell, not in torrents now, but in unbroken sheets of gray crystal,
opaque and veined with white. As the water struck the guards it rebounded
with the force of the downfall in white foam more than a foot high, while
sweeping away over the edge with the impetus and volume of a cataract.
But for the list of the boat, for the Cherokee Rose had not grounded fair and
square on the sand-bar, this flood would have been surging through the
saloon, but the rain drove with the gusts and, the windward side being
several inches lower than the other, the downpour struck upon it and
recoiled from the slant. The sound was something tremendous; the savagery
of the roar of the columns of rain falling upon the roof was portentous,
sinister, expressive of the unreasoning rage of the tempestuous elements and
of the helplessness of human nature to cope with it. Suddenly, whether the
turmoil had in some sort abated, or alien sounds were more insistently
apparent, a new clamor was in the air,—a metallic clanking, repetitious,
constantly loudening, was perceptible from the lower deck. Then ensued a
deep, long-drawn susurrus. The engines were astir once more. Obviously,
an effort was in progress to get the Cherokee Rose off the bar under her own
steam. A babel of joyous, excited comment in the saloon, at the extreme
pitch of the human voice, could hardly be heard in the midst of the turmoil
without. All agreed that a vast flood must have fallen to raise the river
sufficiently to justify the attempt.
“We are below the junction of several tributaries in this vicinity that
bring down a million tuns a minute in such weather as this,” commented
one of the passengers.
Another, of the type that must have information at first hand, rushed to
the door to secure a conference with the Captain, regardless, or, perhaps,
unconscious, of the remonstrance of the others. As the door opened in his
hand a torrent of water rushed in, traversing the length of the saloon over
the red velvet carpet, and a blast of the wind promptly knocked him off his
feet, throwing him across the cabin against a huddle of overturned chairs.
The other men, with one accord, sprang forward, and it was only with the
united strength of half a dozen that the door could be forced to close,
although its lock seemed scarcely able to hold it against the pressure from
without. For the wind had redoubled its fury. This region is the lair of the
hurricane, and there was a prophetic anxiety in every eye.
It is, indeed, well that these great elemental catastrophes are as transient
as terrible. Human nerves could scarcely sustain beyond the space of a
minute the frightful tumult that presently filled the air. The wind shrilled
with a keen sibilance, and shouted in riotous menace that seemed to strike
against the zenith and rebound and reëcho anew. The sense of its speed was
appalling. The thunderous crashing of the forests on the river bank told of
the riving of timber and the up-rooting of great trees laid flat in the narrow
path of the hurricane. For in the limitations of the track lies the one hope of
escape from this sudden frenzy of the air. Its area of destruction may be
fifty miles in length, but is often only a hundred yards or so in width, cut as
straight as a road and as regular, when this awful, invisible foe marches
through the country. Perhaps this was the thought in the mind of every man
of the little coterie, the chance that the Cherokee Rose might be outside the
path of the hurricane. The next moment a hollow reverberation of an
indescribably wide and blaring sound broke forth close at hand, as the
smoke-stacks of the Cherokee Rose crashed down on the texas and rolled
thence on the hurricane deck, the guy wires jangling loose and shivering in
keen, metallic tones. The boat yawed over, suddenly smitten, as it were, by
one fierce stroke. The furniture, the passengers, all were swept down the
inclined plane of the floor of the saloon and against the mirrored doors of
the staterooms. An aghast muteness reigned for one moment of surprise and
terror. Then cries broke forth and futile and frantic efforts were made to
reach the upper portion of the cabin. A wild alarm was heard that the boat
was on fire,—that the boat had slipped off the sand-bar and was sinking.
Reiterated shouts arose for the officers, the Captain, the clerks, the pilot, the
mate, and the tumult without was reflected by the confusion and terror
within.
Ducie’s brain seemed awhirl at the moment of the disaster. As he
regained his mental poise he saw Mrs. Floyd-Rosney on her knees
frantically struggling with the door of her stateroom, the lock evidently
having somehow sprung in the contortions of the steamer under the blast.
She looked up at him for an instant, but her tongue was obviously incapable
of framing a word in the excitement of that tempestuous crisis. Ducie
suddenly remembered, what everyone else but the mother had forgotten,
that the little boy had scarcely five minutes earlier gone to the stateroom to
be dealt with for the kissing microbes. Observing the inadequacy of her
efforts Ducie rushed to her assistance and sought, by main strength, to force
open the twisted and warped door. It was so difficult to effect an entrance
that he began to doubt if this could be done without an axe, when he
succeeded in splintering it a trifle where it had already showed signs of
having sustained a fracture. Into the aperture thus made he thrust his foot
and then wedged in his knee, finally shattering a panel from the frame, to
the horror of the prisoners within, whose voices of terror found an echo in
Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s anguished exclamations.
Ducie triumphantly lifted out little Ned and then the old colored nurse
was dragged through the aperture, scarcely sufficient for the transit.
“There you are, good as new,” cried Ducie genially.
Some of the doors of the staterooms had burst from their fastenings, and
were sagging and swaying inward, offering pitfalls for the unwary, and, in
that wild and excited group, Ducie alone bethought himself of precaution.
“Look out for the boy, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,—he may fall through one of
those open doors into deep water or into the furnace,—I don’t know what is
now beneath this part of the saloon,—the boat seems twisted and broken to
pieces.”
The suggestion of danger to the child was like a potent elixir to Paula.
Her eyes, strained and set, recovered their normal look of perception, wild
and haggard though they were. She caught the child in her arms and,
although trembling and occasionally staggering under his weight, she would
not relinquish him to Ducie as he desired, but carried him herself safely
along the precarious way. Ducie aided her to clamber up the steep incline
where the doors ceased and the wall was unbroken, there being here the
barber-shop and the office, and the large space utilized as a smoking-room.
Through the windows streamed a deluge of rain, and broken glass lay
scattered all about.
Most of the passengers had gathered here in an attitude of tense
expectancy. A man stood at a speaking-tube and, with a lordly urgency, was
insisting that the Captain should take immediate measures to put the
passengers ashore in the yawl. It was no moment to relish a conspicuous
pose, and Floyd-Rosney was too well habituated to the first place to give it
undue value, but he was obviously in his element and carrying all before
him. It was a one-sided conversation, but the comprehension of his listeners
was quickened by their personal interest in its progress and result.
“No danger?” a sarcastic laugh. “We take the liberty of differing as to
that. The boat may go to pieces on the sand-bar.”
“A shelter? yes,—as long as she lasts, but how long will that be? The
boat not much injured except in the furnishings and glass? You think not?”
very sarcastically.
“Oh, you guarantee? Now what is your guaranty worth to people
drowned in one hundred feet of water?”
“No, we won’t wait to be taken off by the next packet. The river is
rising, and the sand-bar might be covered. We demand it,—the passengers
demand to be set ashore in the yawl.”
“Well, then, we will hold you and the owners liable.”
“We are not prisoners. What’s that? Responsibility? humanity?—shelter?
I’ll take care of the shelter. Duciehurst mansion is scarcely ten miles down
the river. I own it, and the yawl could put us in it in a trice.”
“Yes,—we will risk it,—we will risk the wind and the current. All right.
All right.”
He had carried his point against every protest according to his wont. As
he turned, triumphant and smiling, to the anxious, disheveled, drenched
group, he had all the pomp and port of a public benefactor. Absorbed in
himself and the prospect of his speedy extrication from this uncomfortable
and dangerous plight he was utterly unaware that his wife and only child
had had urgent need of the succor that they had received from a stranger.
Paula gazed enlightened at Floyd-Rosney as if she saw him for the first
time as he was. The scales had fallen from her eyes. His glance met hers.
He had no sense of gratulation that she and the boy were safe. He had not
known they had encountered special danger. He thought they only shared
the general menace which it was his privilege to render less, to annul. He
objected to her pose with the boy in her arms. He deemed it inelegant,—as
little Ned was much too stalwart for the artistic presentment of the babe in
the bosom of graceful maternity,—and the backward cant of her figure thus
extremely plebeian. It was not this personal disapproval, however, that
informed the coldness in his eyes. The incident of the ridicule to which she
had subjected him among these passengers still rankled in every pulsation.
He was glad of the opportunity to confer benefits upon them, from his high
position to rescue them from imminent danger, to be reinstated, in their
opinion, as a man of paramount influence and value,—a fleer at him should
be esteemed, indeed, a self-confessed folly.
“I dare say the old house leaks like a riddle,—I know it is in ruins,” he
said, in a large, off-hand, liberal manner, “but it is on solid ground, at any
rate, and I shall be glad to entertain this worshipful company there as best I
may till we can get a boat that can navigate water and not tow-heads. I
know we can’t spend the night here. In fact, the Captain proposes to set us
ashore as soon as he is convinced that no boat is coming down,—but, of
course, every craft on the river is tied up in such weather as this. If he will
set us ashore at Duciehurst with some bedding and provisions I will ask no
more.”
There was a murmur of acquiescence and acceptance,—then a general
acclaim of thanks, for the wind was still so high that communication was
conducted almost in shouts. Nevertheless, Ducie heard very distinctly when
Mrs. Floyd-Rosney turned toward him a pale, pained, troubled face.
“You will come, too? You will have no scruple about—about the
ownership?” she faltered.
Adrian Ducie laughed satirically. “Not the least scruple in the world. I
have the best right there from every point of view,—even his own!—for if
my brother is only a lessee, and not the rightful owner, as he contended this
morning, Randal is in possession and my welcome is assured in a house of
which he is the host.”
“I only thought—I wanted to say——”
The big child was very big in her arms, and had had his share of the
suffering from the general tumult and excitement. He was fractious, hungry,
and sleepy, although he could not sleep. But he burrowed with his head in
her neck and tried to put his cheek before her lips that she might talk to no
one but him, and began to cry, although he forgot his grievance midway and
attempted to get down on his own stout legs.
“I wanted to say,—you have been so good to me and the baby,—don’t
Ned, be quiet, my pet,—that I could not bear for you to remain in danger or
discomfort on the boat because of any sensitiveness about our presence at
Duciehurst.”
“Don’t you believe it,” he responded cavalierly. “I am not subject to any
sensitiveness about Duciehurst. I shall have the very best that Duciehurst
can afford and be beholden to nobody for it.”
 CHAPTER VII
A diminution in the floods of rain began to be perceptible, and the
extreme violence of the wind was abated. Now and then a gust in
paroxysmal fury came screaming down the river, battering tumultuously at
the shattered doors and windows of the wreck, setting all the loose wires
and chains to clattering, and showing its breadth and muscle by tearing up
some riverside tree and carrying it whirling as lightly as a straw through the
air above the tortured and lashed currents of the stream. The clouds, dark
and slate-tinted, showed occasionally a white transparent scud driving
swiftly athwart their expanse, which gave obvious token of the velocity of
the wind, for, although the hurricane was spent, the menace of the stormy
weather and the turbulent, maddened waters was still to be reckoned with. It
was scarcely beyond noon-day, yet the aspect of the world was of a
lowering and tempestuous darkness. The alacrity of the Captain in getting
them afloat argued that he now accorded more approval to the plan than
when it was first suggested, and that, although he would not have assumed
the responsibility of the removal of the passengers at such imminent risk, he
was glad to forward it when it was of their own volition, indeed insistence.
A fact that his long riparian knowledge revealed to him was not
immediately apparent to the passengers until the yawl was about to be
launched,—the sand-bar was in process of submergence. The rise of the
river was unprecedented in so short an interval, due to the fall of the vast
volume of rain. During the last ten minutes the Captain began to realize that
it was beyond the power of prophecy to judge what proportion of the tow-
head would be above water within the hour. It was not difficult to launch
the yawl from the twisted timbers of the deck. It swung clear and slipped
down with a smart impact, rocking on the tumultuous current as if there
were twenty feet of water beneath it.
“Where the yawl is now was bare sand ten minutes ago,” commented
Floyd-Rosney.
This fact imparted courage to the weak-hearted who had held back at the
sight of the weltering expanse of the great river, the sound of the blasts of
the strong wind, and the overwhelming downpour of the rain. They were
disposed now to depend upon Mr. Floyd-Rosney, who was so masterful and
knowing, and who shared all their interest, rather than the Captain, whose
conservative idea seemed to be to stick to the boat at all hazards, and to
what might be left of the tow-head.
“This is the season of dead low water,” he argued. “This rain is local,—
the rise of the river is only temporary.”
But he had the less influence with them, because they felt that he was
complicated by his duty to the owners of the boat and the shippers of
freight, and also the traditions that forbid the Captain’s abandonment of his
deck till the last moment.
He did not resent the discarding of his opinion, but was quite genial and
hearty as he stood on the guards and himself directed the men who were
handling the yawl.
“It may be the best thing,—if she doesn’t capsize,” he admitted,
—“though I wouldn’t advise it.”
Whereupon the weak-hearted again began to demur.
“Don’t discourage us, Captain,” said Floyd Rosney, frowning heavily,
“we have no other resource.”
“I shall use my best judgment, Mr. Floyd-Rosney,” the Captain retorted.
“I am not here to encourage you in fool-hardy undertakings. We know
where we are now,—and we have the yawl and the other boats as a last
resource. The weather, too, may clear. It can’t rain and blow forever.”
“I shall show my opinion by taking to the boat and carrying my family
with me,” said Floyd-Rosney loftily. “Any one who wishes to go with us
will be very welcome at Duciehurst.”
He already had on his overcoat and hat and the other passengers, with
their suit-cases or such other possessions as could be handed out of their
almost inverted staterooms by the grinning roustabouts, began to make their
precarious descent to the lower deck on the reeking and slippery stair, all
awry and aslant.
“Take care of the Major,—oh, take care of the Major,” cried Hildegarde
Dean, almost hysterically, as the old man was lifted by his colored servant,
who had been with him as a “horse-boy” in the army, and who, though
grizzled, and time-worn, and wrinkled, was still brawny and active. In fact,
he had lived in great ease and competence owing to his special fidelity and
utility in the Major’s infirmities, since “Me an’ de Major fout through de
War.” In fact, if old Tobe might be believed, the majority of the deeds of
valiance in that great struggle were exploited by “Me an’ de Major.”
“Sartainly,—sartainly,” his big voice boomed out on the air, responsive
to the caution, “Me an’ de Major have been through a heap worse
troublements dan dis yere.”
And, indeed, surely and safely he went down the stair, buffeted by the
wind and drenched by the rain and the spray leaping from its impact on the
surface of the water.
Hildegarde herself descended as easily as a fawn might bound down a
hill, to Colonel Kenwynton’s amazement, accustomed to lend the ladies of
his day a supporting arm. She sprang upon the gunwale of the yawl in so
lightsome a poise that it scarcely tipped beneath her weight before she was
seated beside the old blind soldier, joyous, reassuring and hopeful.
“It is hard to be in danger and unable to help others or even to see and
judge of the situation,” he said meekly, bending forward under the down-
pour, his face pallid and wrinkled, its expression of groping wistfulness
most appealing.
“Yes, indeed,” she assented, her voice sounding amidst the rain like the
song of a bird from out a summer shower. “But I think all this hubbub is for
nothing,—the sky is going to clear, I believe, toward the west. Still, the next
packet can take us off at Duciehurst as well as from the Cherokee Rose.”
“And, Major,” with a blithe rising inflection, “I can see a veritable ante-
bellum mansion, and you can go over it with me and explain the life of the
old times. You can refurnish it, Major! You can tell me what ought to stand
here and there, and what sort of upholstery and curtains the ‘Has-Beens’
used to affect.”
His old face was suddenly relumed with this placid expectation; his brain
was once more thronged with reminiscences. He lifted his aged head and
gazed toward the clearing west and the radiant past, both beginning to relent
to a gentle suffusion of restored peace.
In this transient illumination the great dun-tinted forests that lined the
banks showed dimly, as well as the vast river swirling intervenient, tawny,
murky, but with sudden mad whorls of white foam where the current struck
some obstruction flung into its course by the storm. The wreck of the
Cherokee Rose was very melancholy as a spectacle since, but for the
hurricane, she would have been floated in five minutes more of the deluge
of rain. The yawl seemed a tiny thing, painfully inadequate, as it rocked
with a long tilt on the swaying undulations of the current. The preparations
for departure were going swiftly forward; another boat was in process of
loading with material comforts, cots, bedding, all under tarpaulins, boxes
and hampers of provisions, and the trunks and suit-cases of passengers.
Since escape was now possible and at hand, one or two of the faint-hearted
began to experience anew that reluctance to removal, that doubt of an
untried change so common to the moment of decision. “It is a long way—
ten miles in this wind,” said one, “how would it do for a few of us to try
that swamper’s shack on the bank? The yawl is overloaded, anyhow.”
“Now, I can advise you,” said the Captain definitely. “It won’t do at all
to trust river-side rats. You might be robbed and murdered for your watch or
the change in your purse. I am not acquainted with that swamper,—I speak
from precedent. And how can you judge if the shack is above water now,—
or whether it has been blown by the hurricane down the river?”
“Still, the yawl is overloaded,” said Floyd-Rosney, with a trifle of
malice. He was bent on exploiting the situation to his own commanding
credit, and the proposition, reiterated anew, to withdraw for a different
course, nettled his troublous and sensitive pride.
The next man who stepped into the yawl was the one who had advanced
this divergent theory, and Floyd-Rosney flashed a glance of triumph at his
wife, who still stood with the child in her arms at the warped rail of the
promenade deck. She was pale, anxious, doubtful, in no frame of mind to
furnish her wonted plaudits, the incense of wifely flatteries on which his
vanity lived. These others had admired his initiative, had gladly adopted his
plans, were looking to him with a unanimity of subservience that had quite
restored the tone of his wonted arrogance. He could ill brook to see her with
that discouraged questioning in her face, gazing forth over the forbidding
gray water, letting first one, then another pass her to a place in the yawl.
She should have been the first to board it,—to show her faith by her works.
He approached her with a rebuking question.
“Why do you lug that child around, Paula?” he demanded. “He will
break your back.” He stepped forward, as if to lift the little fellow from her
arms, but she precipitately moved a pace backward. Paula’s grisly thoughts
were of the dungeon, the trap of the warped stateroom,—whence the boy
was liberated by a stranger, while his father, unthinking and unnoting, was
absorbed in his own complacence, in his busy and arrogant pose. No,—she
would not let the child go again, she would hold him in her arms if his
weight broke every bone in her body till they were all in safety.
“I don’t want to risk that yawl,” she said querulously. “I think the
Captain knows best,—he has had such long experience. The yawl looks
tricky, and the water is fearful. We ought to take to the yawl as a last resort,
when the steamer can’t house us. That is always the custom. It is only in
cases of absolute necessity that the yawl is used.”
It would be difficult to say whether he were more surprised or incensed,
as for a moment, with short breaths and flashing eyes, he gazed at her. He
was of an impetuous temper, yet not beyond schooling. He had had a
lesson, he had felt the keen edge of her ridicule this morning, and he would
not again lay himself liable to a public exhibition.
“Why, you must be a graduated pilot to know so much about the river,”
he cried with a rallying laugh. “The kid and I are going in the yawl at all
events. Unloose your hold,” he added in a furious undertone. “He is mine,
—he is mine,—not yours.”
He had laid his hand on both hers as they clasped the child. Floyd-
Rosney was still smiling and apparently gracious and good-humored, which
might have seemed much, thus publicly withstood in this moment of
excitement and stress. He was resolved that he would not lower his pride by
an open and obvious struggle. He did not consider her pride. He forced her
fingers apart, invisibly under the folds of the child’s cloak, by an old
school-boy trick of suddenly striking the wrist a sharp blow. The muscles
must needs relax in the pain, the hold give way, and, as the boy was about
to slip from her clasp, his father called for the nurse, placed the child in the
arms of the old servant and consigned them both to a stout roustabout who
had them in the yawl in a trice. Without a word of apology, of justification,
of soothing remonstrance, Floyd-Rosney turned away from his wife with
brisk cheerfulness and once more addressed himself to the matter in hand.
Paula felt that if this had been her husband of yesterday it would have
broken her heart. But that identity was dead,—suddenly dead. Indeed, had
he ever lived? She wondered that the revulsion of feeling did not overpower
her. But she was consciously cool, composed, steady, without the quiver of
a muscle. She made no excuses to herself in her introspection for her
husband,—gave him no benefit of doubt,—urged no palliation of his
brutality. Yet these were not far to seek. The hurricane had come at a crisis
in his mental experience. He had been publicly held up to ridicule, even to
reprehension, by his own subservient wife. He had been released from this
pitiable attitude by some unimaginable impulse in the brother of the man
whom she had jilted at the last moment, and thus confused, absorbed,
scarcely himself at the instant of the stupendous crash, he had lost sight of
the fact, if he had earlier noticed, that the child was not with her, and in the
saloon,—his latest glimpse of the boy was in her arms. It was natural that
he did not witness the rescue by Ducie, for he was planning an escape for
them all, and, surely, it was her place to defer to his views, his seniority, his
experience, and be guided by him rather than take the helm herself. Naught
of this had weight with her. She only remembered the provocation that had
elicited her fleer, his furious whisper of objection, his censorious
interference, the humiliation so bitter that she could not lift her head while
his rebukes hissed in her ears before them all. Then, in that terrible moment
of calamity, he had not thought of her, of their son,—had not rushed to
gather them in his arms, that they might, at least, die together. Doubtless, he
would have said they could die together in due time,—it was not yet the
moment for dying—and he was preparing to postpone that finality as far as
might be.
And thus it was Adrian Ducie,—Randal’s brother—who had saved the
child, shut up in the overturned stateroom like a rat in a trap. She knew, too,
how lightly Floyd-Rosney would treat this if it were brought to his
knowledge—he would say that not a drop of water had touched the child;
he had sustained not an instant’s hurt. That he and his nurse had for a few
moments been unable to turn the bolt of a door was only a slight
inconvenience, as the result of a hurricane. One of the passengers had a
badly bruised arm, on which a chandelier had fallen, another was somewhat
severely cut about the head and face by the shattering of a mirror. The baby
was particularly safe in the restricted little stateroom, where naught more
deadly fell upon him than a pillow.
But it mattered not now to her what Floyd-Rosney said or thought. All
dwindled into insignificance, was nullified by the fact of the covert blow,
on the sly,—how she scorned him—that these men might not see and
despise him for it!—dealt in the folds of the child’s cloak, their child, his
and hers! She wondered that he dared, knowing how she had surrendered
him to scorn in their earlier difference. Perhaps he knew, and, indeed, she
was sure, instinctively, that none would believe; the blow would be
considered unintentional, the incident of the struggle to wrest the child from
her grasp.
If a moment ago she had seemed pale, haggard, a flaccid presentment of
an ordinary type, that aspect had fallen from her like a mask. Her cheeks
burned, and their intense carmine gave an emphasis to the luster and tint of
her redundant yellow hair. Her eyes were alert, brilliant, not gray, nor
brown, nor green, yet of a tint allied to each, and were of such a clarity that
one could say such eyes might well gaze unabashed upon the sun. All her
wonted distinction of manner had returned to her unwittingly, with the
resumption of her normal identity, the reassertion of her courage. The
necessity to endure had made her brave, quick to respond to the exigencies
of the moment.
As the child’s voice came to her through the torrents in a plaintive bleat
of reluctance and terror, full of the pain and fear of parting from her, who
was his little Providence, omnipotent, all-caring, infinitely loving, she
nerved herself to call out gaily to him and wave her hand, and exhort him in
the homely phrase familiar to all infancy, “to be a good boy.” The tears
started to her eyes as she noted his sudden relapse into silence, and saw,
through the rain, how humbly and acquiescently he lent himself to the
bestowal of his small anatomy in the corner deemed fit by the imperious
paternal authority.
Little Marjorie Ashley had been almost stunned into silence for a time.
The terrors of the experience, the exacerbation of nerves in the tempestuous
turmoils, the suspense, the agitation, the fear of injury or even of death, all
seemed nullified now in the expectation of rescue and under the protective
wing of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney. Her father, going within to the office for some
valuable which he had deposited in the safe of the boat, had charged
Marjorie to stand beside Mrs. Floyd-Rosney till his return. The little girl
utilized the interval more acceptably to that lady than one might have
deemed possible, by her extravagant praises of baby Ned and her
appreciative repetition of his bright sayings.
Catching sight of him as he looked up from the yawl, she called out in
affected farewell,—“So long, partner!”—her high, reedy voice penetrating
the down-pour with its keenly sweet and piercing quality, and she fell back
against Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, laughing with delight and gratified mirth, when
the response came shrill, and infantile, and jubilant,—“So long, Mar’jee! So
long, Mar’jee!”
Floyd-Rosney’s look of inquiry as the business of embarkation brought
him near his wife was so marked as to be almost articulate. He could not
understand her changed aspect. He was prepared for tears, for reproaches,
even for an outbreak of indecorous rage. He had intended that, in any event,
she should feel his displeasure, his discipline, and it was of a nature under
which she must needs writhe. Anything that affected the boy, however
slightly, had power to move her out of all proportion to its importance. In
this signal instance of danger, almost of despair, her conduct, her accession
of beauty, seemed inexplicable. Her manner of quiet composure, her look,
the stately elegance so in accord with her slender figure, her attitude, her
gait, peculiarly characteristic of her personality, seemed singularly marked
now, and out of keeping with the situation, challenging comment.
“Mrs. Floyd-Rosney has got the nerve!” said the Captain admiringly.
“She is fit for the bridge of a man-of-war. Are you going to stand by the
deck till the last passenger has taken to the boats, madam?”
For Floyd-Rosney, knowing full well that he was imposing on her no
danger that the others did not share, had made it a point to pass her by in
summoning the ladies to descend to the yawl. In fact, a number of men
were seated on the thwarts by his orders. He had only intended to impress
her with a sense of his indifference, his displeasure, his power. But he had
given her the opportunity to assert her independence, and, incidentally, to
levy tribute on the admiration of the whole boat’s company.
“Mrs. Floyd-Rosney doesn’t care for a living thing but little Ned,” cried
the voluble Marjorie. “If little Ned is safe she had just as lief the rest of us
would go to the bottom as not.”
Mr. Floyd-Rosney took his wife by the elbow. “Come on,” he said, “why
are you lagging back here,—afraid to get in the yawl?” Then he added in a
lower voice, “Can you do nothing to stop that miserable girl’s chatter?”
But the voice, even hissing between his set teeth, was not so low that
Marjorie, being near, did not hear it. At all events, she had had no schooling
in self-repression, in the humiliation of a politic deference. She flamed out
with all the normal instincts of self-asserting and wounded pride.
“No, there isn’t any way to stop my chatter,”—she exclaimed hotly, “for
I have as good a right to talk as you. I am not a ‘miserable girl.’ But I don’t
care what you say. I don’t train with your gang, anyhow!”
“Why, Marjorie,” cried Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, and her husband had a
moment’s relief in the expectation that the indignity offered to him would
be summarily, yet tactfully rebuked. But his wife only said, “What slang! Is
that the kind of thing you learn at Madame Gerault’s?”
She passed her arm about the girl’s shoulder, but Marjorie had as yet
learned no self-control at Madame Gerault’s or elsewhere, and burst into
stormy tears. Even after she was seated in the yawl, beside Mrs. Floyd-
Rosney, she wept persistently, and sobbed aloud. The grief-stricken
spectacle greatly affected little Ned Floyd-Rosney at the further end of the
yawl. After staring, in grave and flushed dismay and amaze for a few
moments, he made one or two spasmodic efforts to cheer his boon
companion from the distance. Then he succumbed to sympathy and wept
dolorously and loudly in concert.
Mrs. Floyd-Rosney made no effort to reach him by word or look. Her
husband, whose nerves a crying child affected with such intense
aggravation that he was seldom subjected to this annoyance, was compelled
to set his teeth in helpless discomfort, and endure the affliction, intensified
by the difference in age, and the variance in pitch and vocal volume of the
two lachrymose performers.
Thus freighted, the yawl pushed off, at length, into the steely rain, the
white foam, and the surging, tawny currents of the river. All looked back at
the sand-bar, doubtless, with some apprehensive regret. The sight of the
stanch Captain on the deck waving his farewell was not calculated to dispel
anxiety. The sand-bar, too, was big,—on board they had scarcely realized its
extent. In comparison with the yawl it seemed very solid, continental. They
sheered off cautiously from it lest the yawl, too, go aground on some
submerged and unsuspected process of land building. It was obviously safer
in the middle of the river, despite the menacing aspect of the swift
tumultuous current, lashed into foaming swirls by the blast. The tremendous
impetus of the flow was demonstrated by the speed of the yawl; in one
moment the steamer had disappeared, its great white bulk, lifted high on the
sand-bar, showed like a mirage through a sudden parting of the dashing
torrents, then fell astern to be glimpsed no more. When the yawl began to
run precipitately toward the bank there was a general outcry of fear, but the
mate, who was navigating the little craft, explained that it must needs go
with the sweep of the current, which now hugged the shore, for the strength
of his crew could not make headway against it, heavily laden as the yawl
was.
From this proximity to the land the voyagers could mark the evidences
of the fury of the hurricane. Its track through the woods was near a hundred
yards wide, in almost a perfectly straight line, and in this avenue the trees
were felled, the ground cleared, the levee laid flat. It was impossible to say
what dwellings or farm-buildings shared the disaster, for no vestige was left
to tell the tale. As the yawl fared onward it encountered one of the great
monarchs of the woods, tossed into the river by the gusts that had uprooted
it and now borne swiftly on by the combined force of the wind and the
current. It required all the strength of the oarsmen to hold back and give
precedence to this gigantic flotsam, lest some uncovenanted swirl of the
waters fling it with all its towering intricacies of boughs upon the boat, and,
hopelessly entangling it, thrash out the life of every creature on board. For
the wind was rife in its branches and thus contorted its course. It tossed
them high; whistled and screamed madly among them, and the yawl,
following reluctantly in the rear, was witness of all the fantastic freaks of
these wild gambols of the gusts. This unlucky blockade of their course gave
rise to some discussion between the mate and the passengers, and Floyd-
Rosney would fain seek to pass the obstruction by a spurt of rowing to one
side.
“I am not well acquainted with the current just along here,” said the
mate, “but if it should make in toward the land with us between it and the
bank we would be flailed alive and drowned besides.”
There was a general consensus of opinion with the mate’s position, and
one of the elderly ladies openly remonstrated against Floyd-Rosney’s risky
proposition, but his wife said never a word.
Suddenly the mate called out in a startled voice: “Back oars,—back,—
back,” and every roustabout put his full force against the current, but their
utmost strength only sufficed to retard the progress of the boat. The tree had
been struck by a flaw of wind which almost turned it over on the surface of
the water, and then went skirling and eddying down the river. The whirling
foliage gave an effect as of a flash of iridescent light through the sad-hued
landscape; the leaves all green and yellow, as in a blend of some gorgeous
emblazonry, showed now against the white foam and now against the slate-
tinted sky. The myriad wild waves, surging to and fro in the commotion,
leaped in long, elastic bounds, and shook their tawny manes. In the
tumultuous undulations of the waters it required all the skill of the
experienced boat-hands to keep the yawl afloat.
“Give it up,” said Floyd-Rosney, at length. “We must go back to the
Cherokee Rose.”
“Impossible,—against the current with this load,” said the mate.
“We can try, at least,” urged Floyd-Rosney. “If we don’t turn back the
current will carry us down into the midst of that cursed tree in case we have
another gust.”
“Isn’t there a bayou about half a mile further?” suggested Adrian Ducie.
“Does the current make in?”
“I am not sure whether it’s a creek or a bayou,” said the mate, “but the
current does make in along there.”
“As if it matters a sou marqué whether it is a creek or a bayou,” fleered
Floyd-Rosney contemptuously.
“It makes all the difference in the world,” retorted Ducie. “If it is a creek
it flows into the Mississippi,—a tributary. If it is a bayou the Mississippi
flows into it, for it is an outlet. If the current sets that way it may carry the
tree into the bayou, provided it is wide enough, and, if it is narrow, the
boughs may be entangled there.”
It was one of the misfortunes under which the voyagers labored that
these consultations of the leaders must needs be made in the hearing of the
others, owing to the restricted space which they occupied. Several had
begun to grow panicky with the suggestion that progress was so environed
with danger, and yet that return was impossible. Perhaps the mate was
skilled in weather-signs not altogether of the atmosphere when he said,
casually,
“You seem to be well acquainted with the river hereabouts, Mr. Ducie.”
“Not the river itself, but I have made a study of a plot of survey of the
Duciehurst lands. Bayou Benoit touches the northwestern quarter-section
just where it leaves the river. We cannot be far now.”
And, indeed, a sudden rift in the sullen cypress woods on the eastern
shore revealed, presently, a stream not sluggish as was its wont, when one
might scarce have discerned the course of the water, whether an inlet or an
outlet of the river. Now it was flowing with great speed and volume
obviously directly from the Mississippi. As the mate had said, the current
hugged the shore. The oarsmen made as scant speed as might be while the
great tree, in its rich emblazonment of green and gold, went teetering
fantastically on the force of the river. Its course grew swifter and swifter
with the momentum of the waters, seeking liberation, until, all at once, it
became stationary. As Ducie had thought probable, its boughs had
entangled themselves with the growths on one side of the narrow bayou. It
was effectually checked for the nonce, although, at any moment, the force
of the stream might break off considerable fragments of the branches and
thus compass its dislodgment.
“Give way, boys,” cried the mate in a stentorian voice. “Give way.” The
crew stretched every muscle, and the yawl skimmed swiftly past the great,
flaring obstruction, swinging and swaying as if at anchor in the mouth of
the bayou. Now and again anxious, frightened glances were cast astern. But
a pursuit by the woodland monster did not materialize.
 CHAPTER VIII
The aspect of the Duciehurst mansion gave no token of its ruinous
condition when first it broke upon the view. Its stately portico, the massive
Corinthian columns reaching to the floor of the third story of the main
building, impressively dominated the scene, whitely glittering, surrounded
by the green leaves of the magnolia grandiflora, ancient now, and of great
bulk and height. The house was duplicated by the reflection in water close
at hand, whether some lake or merely a pool formed by the rain, Paula
could not determine. A wing on either side expressed the large scope of its
construction, and from a turn in the road, if a grass-grown track could be so
called, came glimpses, in the rear of the building, of spacious galleries both
above and below stairs, shut in by Venetian blinds, so much affected in the
architecture of Southern homes in former years. A forest of live oak, swamp
maple, black gum closed the view of the background, and cut off the place
from communication with the cotton lands appurtenant to it, but at a very
considerable distance. For the region immediately contiguous to the house
had become in the divagations of the great river peculiarly liable to
overflow, and thus the forest, known, indeed, as the “open swamp,”
continued uncleared, because of the precarious value of the land for
agricultural operations. In fact, the main levee that protected the fields now
lay far in the rear of the old Duciehurst mansion. Doubtless in times of
specially high water seeping rills effected entrance at door and casement
and ran along the floors and rose against the walls, and brought as tenants
crayfish and frogs, water-snakes and eels, and other slimy denizens of the
floods, who explored the strange recesses of this refuge, and, perhaps, made
merry, thus translated to the seat of the scornful.
Paula paused on the crest of the old levee. It had been in its day a
redoubtable embankment, and despite the neglect of a half century, it still
served in partial efficiency, and its trend could be discerned far away. She
gazed at the place with emotions it was difficult for her to understand. She
could not shake off the consciousness of the presence of Adrian Ducie, nor
could she cease to speculate how it must affect him to see his ancestral
estate in the possession of the usurper, for thus he must consider her
husband. Ducie had grown silent since they had disembarked, and walked a
little apart from the cluster of tramping refugees. She dared not look at his
face.
But law is law, she argued within herself. It was not the fiat of her
husband or of his predecessors, but the decree of the court that had given
the property to them. Nevertheless, there was to her mind an inherent
coercive evidence of the truth of the tradition of the released mortgage, duly
paid and satisfied, and she looked at the old place with eyes rebuked and
deprecatory, and not with the pride or interest of the rightful owner.
It was still raining as the group reached the pavement of heavy stone
blocks. These had defied the growths of neglect and the wear of time, and
were as they had always been save that one of them had scaled and held a
tiny pool of shallow water, which reflected the sky. Her husband walked
beside her, now and again glancing inquiringly at her. Never before in all
their wedded life had so long a difference subsisted between them. For,
even if she were not consciously at fault, Paula had always hitherto made
haste to assume the blame, and frame the apology, for what odds was it, in
good sooth, who granted the pardon, she was wont to argue, so that both
were forgiving and forgiven. Now, she recked not of his displeasure. She
seemed, indeed, unusually composed, absorbed, self-sufficient. She did not
even glance at him, yet how her eyes were accustomed to wait upon him.
She looked about with quiet observation, with obvious interest. One might
suppose, in fact, that she did not think of him at all, as she walked so
daintily erect and slender, with such graceful, sober dignity beside him. He
had acquitted himself well that day, he thought, had certainly earned golden
opinions, but he was beginning to miss sadly the most adroit flatterer of all
his experience, the woman who loved him. As together they ascended the
broad stone steps he suddenly paused, took her hand in one of his and with
ceremony led her through the great arched portal, from which the massive
doors had been riven and destroyed long ago.
“Welcome to your own house, my wife,” he said with his fine florid
smile and a manner replete with his conscious importance and his relish of
it.
At that moment there came a sound from the ghastly vacancy glimpsed
within, a weird, shrill sound, full of sinister suggestion. The group, peering
in from behind them, thrilled with horror, broke into sudden frightened
exclamations, before its keen repetition enabled them to realize that it was
only the hooting of an owl, roused, doubtless, from his diurnal slumbers by
the tones of the echoing voice and the vibrations of the floor under an
unaccustomed tread. Some sheepish laughter ensued, at themselves rather
than at Floyd-Rosney, but at this moment any merriment was of invidious
suggestion and he flushed deeply.
“Here, you fellow,” he hailed one of the roustabouts, “get that owl out of
here, and any other vermin you can find,” and he tossed the darkey a dollar.
The roustabout showed all his teeth, and he had a great many of them,
and with a deprecatory manner ran to pick up the silver coin. He was
trained to a degree of courtesy, and he fain would have left it where it had
fallen on the pavement until he had executed the commission. But he knew
of old his companions of the lower deck, now busied in bringing up the
luggage of the party. Therefore, he pocketed the gratuity before he went
briskly and cheerfully down the long hall to one of the inner apartments
whence proceeded the sound of ill-omen.
While they were still making their way into the main hall they heard a
great commotion of hootings and halloos, and all at once a tremendous
crash of glass. It is a sound of destruction that rouses all the proprietor
within a man.
“Great heavens,” cried Floyd-Rosney, “is the fool driving the creature
through the window without lifting the sash, little glass as there is left
here.”
It seemed that this was the case, for a large white owl, blinded by the
light of day, floundering and fluttering, went winging its way clumsily
scarcely six feet from the ground through the rain, still falling without, and
after several drooping efforts contrived gropingly to perch himself on a
broken stone vase on the terrace, whence the other roustabouts presently
dislodged him, and with gay cries and great unanimity of spirit, proceeded
to dispatch him, hooting and squawking in painful surprise and protesting to
the last.
Paula had caught little Ned within the doorway to spare his innocence
and infancy the cruel spectacle. And suddenly here was the roustabout who
had been sent into the recesses of the house, coming out again with a
strange blank face, and a peculiar, hurried, dogged manner.
“Did you find any more owls? And why did you break the glass to get
him out?” Floyd-Rosney asked, sternly.
 “Naw, sir,” the man answered at random, but loweringly. He bent his
head while he swiftly threaded his way through the group as if he were
accustomed to force his progress with horns. He was in evident haste; he
stepped deftly down the flight to the pavement and, turning aside on the
weed-grown turf, reached the shrubbery and was lost to view among the
dripping evergreen foliage.
As it is the accepted fad to admire old houses rather than the new, a
gentleman of the party who made a point of being up-to-date began to
comment on the spacious proportions of the hall, and the really stately
curves of the staircase as it came sweeping down from a lofty entresol. “It
looks as if it might be a spiral above the second story, isn’t that an unusual
feature, or is it merely the attic flight?” he interrogated space.
For Floyd-Rosney, all the host, was looking into the adjoining rooms and
giving orders for the lighting of fires wherever a chimney seemed
practicable.
“Listen how the old rattle-trap is leaking,” said one of the elderly ladies,
ungratefully.
Paula made no comment. She was hearing the melancholy drip, drip,
drip of the rain through the ceilings of the upper stories. As the drops
multiplied in number and increased in volume they sounded to her like foot-
falls, now rapid, now slow, circumspect and weighty; sometimes there was
a frenzied rush as in a wild catastrophe, and again a light tripping in a sort
of elastic tempo, as of the vibrations of some gay dance of olde. The
echoes,—oh, the echoes,—she dropped her face in her hands for a moment,
lest she should see the echoes materialized, that were coming down the
stairs, evoked from the silence, the solitude, the oblivion of the ruined
mansion. Neglected here so long, who would have recked if the old
memories had taken wonted form—who would have seen, save the
moonbeam, itself wan and vagrant, or the wind of kindred elusiveness,
going and coming as it listed.
Yet there had been other and more substantial tenants. “The damned
rascals have pulled up nearly every hearth in the house,” Floyd-Rosney was
saying, as he came forging back through the rooms on the right. Then once
more among the ladies he moderated his diction. “Destroying the hearths,
searching for the hidden treasure of Duciehurst—idiotic folly! River pirates,
shanty-boaters, tramps, gipsies, and such like vagrants, I suppose.”
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