The "family of that name"—to quote Watson—were a group of four islands so entitled from earliest flatboat days, clustered in the river, just above the town. Since that day two of the chicks have flown, or grown, to the mainland, and the mother bird is now merely the "Old Hen" with one "Chicken Island," while "Poor Paddy," we are told, "works on the railway."
In its first forty leagues above Memphis the river went—has gone—still goes—through more violent writhings than in any like part of its whole course, running almost twenty crazy miles to make two sane ones—made finally, in the republic's hundredth year, by Centennial Cut-off. On an average there was an island for every four miles of river, or, say, three for every hour of the Votaress's progress, and in this high water she was running all their chutes. A great resource such incidents were, on that particular day, to Ramsey. At any moment when conversation needed to be started, stopped, or turned, here was her chance. Some of the islands covered many square miles, contained large plantations, and had names as well as numbers. Island Forty, reached about ten o'clock, was also Beef Island. Number Thirty-eight, which they began to pass half an hour later, was Brandywine Island. To pass Island Thirty-five on its short side at full speed took half an hour, and Forked-Deer Island, which kept the boat flying up a narrow chute from half-past two till three o'clock, was old Twenty-seven and Twenty-six grown together.
Now, these things are geography rather than history. But for at least two souls aboard the Votaress they were more history than geography. History—they were life! the outer frame of life so really lived that for those two souls it would be history thenceforth to life's end. And here comes in some pure philosophy from the two pilots: to wit, that if you turn any old maxim over you will always find another truth on its other side. They reached this conclusion, through Ned's remarking that the course of true love never runs smooth.
"That," said Watson, "depends. It depends a lot on who they air that's a-takin' the course. Ef they're the right ones, a real for-true pair, sech as the wayfarin' man though a pilot kin see air a pair, like——"
"Two gloves," said Ned.
"Yass, or galluses—I misdoubt ef there's anything in the world that'll run so smooth through and over and around and under so much cussed roughness as what true love will."
The remark was justified before their eyes. The two whom they contemplated, outwardly so unlike, were in their essence so of a kind that they belonged each to each as simply and patently as the first human pair. They saw it so themselves. Society about them was strangely primitive—a "clapboard civilization," the actor named it to his wife at their pilot-house point of view—and the "for-true" pair in sight below them took frank advantage of its conditions to appropriate and accept each other as simply and completely as if these weird conditions—with their Devil's Elbow, Race-ground, Island, Tea-table, and Back-oven—were a veritable Eden as Eden was before the devil got in. Without a note of courtship or coquetry love ran ever more and more smoothly, growing hourly and receiving each accession as we have seen the Mississippi receive Red River—merely by deepening its own flow—but, unlike the Mississippi, gaining in transparency as it gained in depth and power.
Since leaving Memphis this love without courtship or coquetry had grown under the effulgence of Madame Hayle's immediate presence like a grain-field in sunshine. On her return from the triple burial, through sheer exhaustion, she had fainted away. Borne upstairs by the physician's command and allowed the roof but forbidden the lower deck for twenty-four hours, she had let Mrs. Gilmore and "Harriet" assume her pious task turn about, going and coming by after stairs. And so love grew on. But so did hate, so did craft, all three, to borrow the figure, going and coming by the after stairs of general intercourse.