“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.