They called it murder in the papers; there was a great outcry; but where was the foul play? The boy (a child of ten) had heard or seen nothing; it was impossible that Wylie could have been foully dealt with, and no sound or cry reach Fordyce or me, half a dozen feet off. It was just as impossible that he could have left the shop, unseen by us on the wide, open levee. That he could have gone voluntarily, nobody hinted. The poor fellow had but few ideas beyond his wife and boy, Joe. His trunk on board was found filled with cheap summer clothes for them both, some tinware, a japanned tea-tray, a china mug; trifles which he had gathered up at auctions, and was taking to Cairo to make their little home comfortable. He had made an engagement to go out with the first clerk that afternoon; his clean shirt, collar, and shaving apparatus were all laid out in his state-room.
But that was the last of him. It only remained to gather up these things and carry them with the news to his wife.
I shirked that. I cannot face a woman in trouble. I ordered Stein, who had been a sort of crony of his, to do it. Stein was the steward, and was leaving the boat. He had a good berth offered to him in St. Louis, he said; so that I knew he had time to see Wylie’s widow, and break it gently to her.
If widow she was. If Wylie had died naturally I would have dismissed him from my mind; but the matter rankled there, as I might say, from its very doubt and mystery.
About two years afterward, therefore, when Warrick brought a little boy on board, as the boat lay at Cairo, and told me it was Wylie’s son, I found myself going, again and again, to the part of the deck where the child was playing, feeling pained to notice how coarsely dressed it was, and how pinched, even hunger-bitten, the little honest face.
“Is it going so badly with her?” I asked.
Warrick nodded, saying aloud, “Joe’s shaken with the whooping-cough, Captain. He’s the deuce of a boy for sniffing up all the ailments that are going up and down the river.”
Joe looked up and laughed.
“He had better shake them down into the river again, then,” I said. “Let him and his mother come aboard for a trip or two. Nothing like air off of water for that whoop, the old women say.”
I sent Warrick to urge the plan on Mrs. Wylie. I knew it was not the air that was needed so much as good, wholesome food. Warrick set apart the best state-room for her, and I dropped in myself to see that it was all in order.