Gideon's Band: A Tale of the Mississippi. George Washington Cable
than before, swung nearer and nearer to the Votaress's course until it vanished forward of the great wheel-house as she headed northeast.
The very pilot at the helm was not more awake than the reclining Ramsey as she pondered the hours, each one a year, that had passed since she came aboard. All their happenings, dark and bright; all their speeches; all their faces, male, female, aged, adolescent, juvenile, danced through her fancy with a variety and multiplicity of values which seven such little country-girl minds as hers, thought she, could hardly make room for. It seemed as though a shower of coined gold were overflowing her wee muslin apron of an intelligence and dropping through it. She could scarcely remain in the berth. Listen! Was her mother awake, in the lower one? The boat veered a trifle back northward and suddenly again, hovering over dim water and shore and blazing like a herald angel, was the morning star, a scant point or so to "stabboard." She chuckled, softly, at the word.
Gently her name was called, beneath her: "Ramsey?"
She let her face into the pillow and shook with the fun of it. If she should squeak half a note of reply she would be ordered to stay abed. Soon the mother rose and began stealthily to dress. No doubt it was to return to those poor Germans below. The thought was very sobering. Ramsey yearned to go with her, but knew she might as well ask leave to ride in the white yawl which, night and day, so incessantly, invitingly skimmed, zigzagged, foamed, and bounded after the Votaress, holding on to her fantail by its jerking painter.
The yawl reminded her of the boy Hugh. He seemed to belong to the boat in much the same way as it. He was a boy, nothing else—humph!—pooh!—though he seemed to think himself the elephant of the show. A boy, and yet with what a mind! Not that she should ever want one like it—whoop! what would she ever do with it? No wonder she had laughed in his face. Without laughter she would have been his tossed and trampled victim. Laughter was her ladder; the ladder up which the circus girl runs to sit on the elephant's shoulder.
The lock of the stateroom door whispered. Her mother was going! Now she was gone! The daughter rose enough to look out on the gliding flood. It was day. But, night or day, how it intensified existence, this perpetual, tremulous passing of heaven and earth over and round and by and beneath one! Every least incident, indoors or out, was large and vivid, and a mere look from a window became a picture in the memory, to hang there through life. Nay, a sound was enough, too much. The remote peck-peck of that carpenter's hammer smote into her mind the indelible image of the only thing he could be making at such an hour. Trying to be deaf, she thought of Joy—timely thought! At any moment the old dear might steal in. She dropped from her berth, and when the actual invasion came, when Joy appeared, Ramsey was at the wash-stand, splashing like a canary, while strewn about the cramped place lay a lot of fresh attire, her Sunday best, brightest, longest.
"Now, you needn't say one word!" she cried.
The old woman bridled to say many, but before she could speak there was a fervent challenge to answer:
"Do you realize all I've got to attend to to-day?"
The nurse's mouth opened but another question was shot into it: "Has anybody told about the Quakeress?"
There was a limit to forbearance. "Now, Miss Ramsey Hayle, ef dey is tell it, aw ef dey hain't—to yo' ma—dat's all right an' beseemly. But fo' you, dat ain't no fitt'n' story fo' you to heah!"
Ramsey stared from her towel with lips apart. "Why, you—I'm going to hear it!—all!—this day!—or, anyhow, this trip!—from—from—" She fell upon the nurse's shoulder, convulsed.
"F'om who' is you gwine hear it? Stop, missie, stawp! Dat's madness, dat laughteh. De Bible say' so! F'm who'—? Lawd! yo' head's a-wett'n' my breas'-han'kercheh!"
Ramsey drew up, her eyes dancing, but went into a new transport as she replied: "From the baby elephant!"
"No, you don't, Miss Ramsey Hayle! No, you don't! An' besides, befo' you heah de story o' de Quak'ess you want to heah de story o' Phyllis."
XVI
PHYLLIS
From earliest childhood the Hugh whom it gave Ramsey such rapture to nickname had unconsciously worn the dim frown that seemed to her so droll because at once so scrutinous yet so appealing.
To others that faint shade had never meant more than an inborn mental painstaking; a mind as steadily at work as the pulse; seemingly sluggish, really active. But Ramsey, in her stateroom, letting Joy dress her for all the Sabbath could mean afloat or ashore, could not accept such a thought. A feminine eagerness to read the masculine brow had promptly imputed to Hugh's a depth of mystery for which her romantic young soul demanded a romantic interpretation. Hence, mainly, her hunger for the story of the Quakeress. She had perceived, she thought, a relation between it and the clouded brow, and was bent on finding for the brow's owner as amazing a part in the tale as could be contrived by any piecing together of its facts which did not absolutely mutilate them. And these facts already she had begun to collect when by the mention of this "Phyllis" she discovered that old Joy had at least a share of the facts and under due pressure would yield them up.
"Phyllis?" asked Ramsey, "who was Phyllis?"
"Humph! Neveh hear o' Phyllis? Well, dey wuz reason fo' dat, too. Phyllis wuz de likeliest yalleh gal I eveh see, not-in-standin' she wuz my full fus' cousin."
Now, one could be as dark as a sloe and yet have a cousin as yellow as a marigold, but Ramsey did not see it so. "How can that be?" she laughed, "when you are so out and out black?" The bare idea seemed too comical for human endurance.
"I ain't no blackeh'n Gawd made me—oh, Lawd! missie, how I gwine button you up ef you shif' an' wriggle like dat? Phyllis wuz nuss to all de Co'teney chil'en. 'Caze dat same day when de new Quak'ess come down de riveh wid dis same Mahs' Hugh, new-bawn, dah wuz yo' pa on his new boat, de Conjuror——"
"Ow! the Conqueror!"
"Yass'm, dat's what I say. And dah wuz yo' ma, an' me, o' co'se, and dah wuz Phyllis, my full fus' cousin—now, ef you cayn't stop a-gigglin' an' wrigglin' long enough fo' me to finish dis——"
Ramsey was too unnerved to heed. "How could—" she insisted—"how could a—a mulatto girl be your first cousin?"
"Now, you dess neveh min' how! Phyllis wa'n't no mullatteh, nohow. She wuz a quadroom! Heh mullatteh motheh wuz my own sisteh!"
"Oh, you mean half-sister!"
"I means whole sisteh! Miss Hayle, betteh you dess drap dat subjic' now, an' thaynk Gawd fo' yo' ign'ance!"
"All right! all right! whole sister! go on! were you twins?" The querist gave a wild start of surprise at herself and sank to the floor.
"Missie," sighed the old woman, "y'ain't neveh in yo' life stopped to think dat niggehs is got feelin's, is you?"
The speech was hardly begun before the girl was up and about the protester's neck: "Hush! ple-ease hush! You've said it before, you've said it before, you've said it before, before!"
The nurse's eyes filled: "Yass, an' what use it been? De wuss thing I know 'bout good white folks—an' when I says 'good' I means de best!—dat is, dat dey don't believe niggehs is got feelin's!" It was hard to speak on, for Ramsey had pushed her into a chair and was in her lap.
"They do! they do, mammy Joy, they do!" She fell to kissing her, first slowly, then wildly as Joy insisted:
"No, dey don't. Ef dey did, Phyllis 'ud neveh 'a' come to de pass she came to. But dey don't! Some o' de bes' believes dey believes, dat's all. Oh, I 'llow you, lots o' white folks is got—oh, Lawd! don't