LXII
EUTHANASIA
A few steps aside from Hugh and his grandfather at the forward rail of the hurricane roof, in a glow of autumn twilight, the Gilmores and the three couples taken on at Vicksburg observed the Enchantress, under Watson's skill, lay her lower guards against the guards of the Natchez wharf-boat with a touch as light as a human hand.
Down on the wharf-boat, in its double door, as beautiful in her fuller years as in Votaress days, and more radiant, stood Madame Hayle. A man-servant at one elbow, a maid at the other, saw the group on the roof fondly bidding for her smiles, but except one sent earlier to the two Courteneys they were all for her husband and daughter, who, unseen from above, awaited her half-way down the main forward stairs. When the maid, however, leaned to her and spoke, her glance went aloft and her gestures were a joy even to the strangers who crowded the boat's side. Now while the stage was run out and her husband met her and gave her his arm, and white-jackets seized her effects, the man-servant answered a question softly called over to him by Ramsey, and the group overhead caught his words:
"De twins couldn' come. No, miss, 'caze dey ain't in town. No, miss, dey bofe went oveh to de Lou'siana place 'istiddy.... Yass, miss, on a bah hunt in Bayou Crocodile swamp."
Mrs. Gilmore stole a glance at Hugh, but the only sign that he had heard was a light nod to the mate below, and a like one up to Watson.
"Take in that stage," called the mate to his men. The engine bells jingled, the Enchantress backed a moment on one wheel, then went forward on both, fluttered her skirts of leaping foam, made a wide, upstream turn, headed down the river, and swept away for Natchez Island just below and for New Orleans distant a full night's run. She had hardly put the island on her larboard bow when merrily up and down the cabin and out on the boiler deck and thence down the passenger guards rang the supper bell.
"Bayou Crocodile," said a Carthaginian descending the wheel-house stair, "that's where one of the sons-in-law has his plantation, isn't it?"
"On the Black River, yes," said he of Milliken's Bend.