Birthright: A Novel

by T. S. Stribling

The Bridal Couple Embarked for Cairo

The bridal couple embarked for Cairo on the Red Cloud, a packet in the Dubuque, Ohio, and Tennessee River trade. Peter and Cissie were not allowed to walk up the main stairway into the passengers' cabin, but were required to pick their way along the boiler-deck, through the stench of freight, lumber, live stock and sleeping roustabouts. Then they went through the heat and steam of the engine-room up a small companionway that led through the toilet, on to the rear guard of the main deck, and thence back to a little cuddy behind the main saloon called the chambermaid's cabin.

The chambermaid's cabin was filled with the perpetual odor of hot soap- suds, soiled laundry, and the broader smell of steam and the boat's machinery. The little place trembled night and day, for the steamer's engines were just beneath them, and immediately behind them thundered the great stern-wheel of the packet. A single square window in the end of the chambermaid's cabin looked out on the wheel, but at all times, except when the wind was blowing from just the right quarter, this window was deluged with a veritable Niagara of water. The continual shake of the cabin, the creak of the rudder-beam working to and fro, the watery thunder of the wheel, and the solemn rumble of the engines made conversation impossible until the travelers grew accustomed to the noises. Still, Cissie found it pleasant. She liked to sit and look out into the main saloon, with its interminable gilded scrolls extending away up the long cabin, a suave perspective. She liked to watch the white passengers dine—the white napery, the bouquets, the endless tables all filled with diners; some swathed in napkins from chin to waistband, others less completely protected. It gave Cissie a certain tang of triumph to smile at the swathed ones and to think that she knew better than that.

At night a negro string-band played for the white excursionists to dance, and Cissie would sit, with glowing eyes, clenching Peter's hand, every fiber of her asway to the music, and it seemed as if her heart would go mad. All these inhibitions, all this spreading before her of forbidden joys, did not daunt her delight. She reveled in them by propinquity.

The chambermaid was a Mrs. Antolia Higgman, a strong, full-bodied café-au-lait negress. She was a very sensible woman, and during her work on the boat she had picked up a Northern accent and a number of little mannerisms from the Chicago and St. Louis excursionists, who made ten-day round trips from Dubuque to Florence, Alabama, and return. When Mrs. Higgman was not running errands for the women passengers, she was working at her perpetual laundering.

At first Peter was a little uneasy as to how Mrs. Higgman would treat Cissie, but she turned out a good-hearted woman, and did everything she could to make the young wife comfortable. It soon became clear that Mrs. Higgman knew the whole situation, for one day she said to Cissie in her odd dialect, burred with Yankeeish "r's" and "ing's."

"These river-r towns, Mrs. Siner-r, are jest like one big village, with the river-r for its Main Street. I know ever-r'thang that goes on, through the cabin-boys an' cooks, an'—an'—you cerrtainly ar-re a dear- r, Mrs. Siner-r," and thereupon, quite unexpectedly, she kissed Cissie.

So on about the second day down the river Cissie dropped her saddened manner and became frankly, freely, and riotously happy. After the fashion of village negresses, she insisted on helping Mrs. Higgman with her work, and, incidentally, she cultivated Mrs. Higgman's Northern accent. When the chambermaid was out on her errands and Cissie found a moment alone with Peter, she would tweak his ear or pull his cheek and provoke him to kiss her. Indeed, it was all the hot, shuddering little laundry-room could do to contain the gay and bubbling Cissie.

Peter thought and thought, resignedly now, but persistently, how this strange happiness that belonged to them both could be. He was content, yet he felt he ought not to be content. He thought there must be something base in himself, yet he felt that there was not. He drank the wine of his honeymoon marveling.

On the morning before the Red Cloud entered the port of Cairo Mrs. Higgman was out of the cabin, and Peter stood at the little square window, with his arm about Cissie's waist, looking out to the rear of the steamer. A strong east wind blew the spray away from the glass, and Peter could see the huge wheel covered with a waterfall thundering beneath him. Back of the wheel stretched a long row of even waves and troughs. Every seventh or eighth wave tumbled over on itself in a swash of foam. These flashing stern waves strung far up the river. On each side of the great waterway stretched the flat shores of Kentucky and Ohio. Here and there over the broad clay-colored water moved other boats—tow-boats, a string of government auto-barges, a snag-boat, another packet.