Gideon's Band: A Tale of the Mississippi

by George Washington Cable

Then as if carried there by some force not her own she found herself again in the bewildering sheen of the footlights, smiling merrily to the hushed, half-seen assemblage, and suddenly aware of every throb of the Votaress's bosom, every fall of her winged feet, every tinkle of her cabin's candelabra, and, most vivid of all, horribly out of time with all, the still insistent "rap, tap, tap" of the carpenter's hammer.

At the same time, unconfessedly, the eager audience took note of quite another group of facts, emphasized by the appearance of Hugh in a back row of seats, by the presence of Hayle's twins in the dusk of the front row, with war even in the back of their heads, and by the illuminated form of the singer just drawing a last breath of preparation to exhale it in melody. Hardly in the gathering was there one who had not by this time learned the whole state of affairs between all Hayles, all Courteneys, and all those others whom its schemings, aggressions, discomfitures, tirades, and prophetic threats had entangled with them. Every one thought he knew precisely both Hugh's and Ramsey's varied relations to each and all those persons, his and her effects upon them, and his and her ludicrously dissimilar ways of getting those effects. They knew this warfare was still on and was here before them now. In every phase of it in which Ramsey had taken part she had come off victor and in every instance had done so by the sheer power of what she, with fair accuracy, called nonsense. So now they were ready to see her, at any juncture the twins or accident might spring, show the same method and win an even more lustrous triumph in keeping with her own metamorphosis. Nay, they were more than ready to lend a hand toward such an outcome. Like Watson, they had sentimentally matched Hugh and Ramsey, prospectively, in their desire, and saw that such a union must sooner or later be, if it was not already, a paramount issue in the strife. In such expectancy sat the throng, keenly aware of the twins at their front and Hugh at their back, as Ramsey's indrawn breath began to return in song, its first notes as low as her voice could sink, its time slow, its verbal inflections those of the freight-deck negro:

"Do you belong toe Gideon's ban'?"

So far it got before it was drowned in a deluge of laughter and applause. She had made, as Gilmore said to his wife behind the curtain, a "ten-strike." Her hearers did not pause an instant to determine whether the utterance was wit or humor or pure inanity. It fitted their mood; fitted it better than the actor or Hugh had believed it could. To the company's notion it was good nonsense offsetting and overpowering an otherwise invincible bad nonsense and snatching from it all right of argument, sympathy, or judicial appeal; laughing it out of court, to remain out at least until the completion of this voyage should give this jury, these hearers, an honorable discharge. The shrewd good sense of it, in their judgment, was the most fun of all, and while in her heart Ramsey was gratefully giving the credit of that to the actor and Hugh, the people naturally gave it to her and laughed and clapped and pounded again on second thought.

Now abruptly they hushed and let her resume:

"Do you belong toe Gideon's ban'?

Here's my heart an' here's my han'.

Do you belong toe Gideon's ban'?

Fight'n faw yo' home!"

Again the audience broke in.