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 Suddenly this meager expression of the world beyond was withdrawn from contemplation.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.