The Story of Duciehurst: A Tale of the Mississippi

by Charles Egbert Craddock

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.