Old Reliable in Africa/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
THE YOUNG VIOLINIST
WHEN Colonel Spottiswoode stuck out his head from a door, glanced up and down the deck and beckoned for Zack, the negro never saw him. Zack had his hat in his left hand, gesticulating with his right; Miss Stanton, half a yard ahead, kept turning and laughing as she walked. "Missy, I'm gwine to wait right here till dis here boat makes her fust landin'. I wants you to see how dat mate gwine to boss dese rousters. You ain't never been on no steamboat befo'—jes wait till us gits to de fust landin'."
"The first landing? We won't land for six or seven days."
"Six or seven days? Lordee, Missy, I sho' would love to be roustabout on dis boat—or git de job o' callin' stations. I got a friend what's porter on de A. & V. Railroad, an' I 'lowed he had er sof' snap. But, Lordee! Calling stations on dis boat, dat would be all right, all right."
"So you don't like hard work?"
"Yas'm, Missy, I ain't skeered o' work. Like Uncle Aaron he say about a triflin' nigger: 'dat nigger ain't what you call skeered o' work; he'll lie down beside de bigges' kind o' job an' go to sleep, jes ez nacheral.' Huh! you know Cunnel ain't gwine to take me way yonder to Afriky Landin', to larn dem niggers how to hoe cotton, 'cept I's a mighty good worker myself."
"Who is the Colonel?" Miss Stanton inquired with genuine interest.
"Lordee, Miss, he jes de Cunnel. How come you ain't heard o' Cunnel? Whar you been all yo' life?"
"I live in Virginia; in the mountains."
"Must be mighty high mountains, and mighty fer, ef you don't know Cunnel. Most ev'body knows Cunnel what knows me, all dem rich white folks up and down Cherry Street."
"Cherry Street? Where is that?"
Zack gazed upon her at first with a benevolent pity—then the smile broke: "Shucks, Missy, now you's prankin' wid me."
"No, really" Miss Stanton settled herself in a steamer-chair, and felt deliciously guilty at encouraging the gossip of a servant.
Zack gave an enthusiastic sketch of his most intimate friend, Colonel Beverly Spottiswoode, with personal details of all the rich white folks up and down Cherry Street. Then he launched into a description of Sherwood and Kathleen Plantations, cotton and negroes, bear hunting and levees breaking. Neither he nor the girl noticed that their vessel had passed into open sea. On either side, before, behind, lay the shoreless water, nothing but water. Zack looked up, then ran to the rail, gripped it with both hands and stared. "Lawd Gawd, Missy! levee's done broke; river's all over ev'ything! Never seed sech a overflow. Dat's why dem folks was all huddled in N'Yawk—to keep out o' de high water. I got to run tell Cunnel." Zack disappeared through a doorway, and dived down the stairs. Then Miss Stanton had a half hour to herself.
When Zack sneaked up the staircase again, and poked out his black face from the door, there was a humorous twitching at the corners of his mouth. He gave a sidelong glance around him before venturing on deck.
"Dat sho' is one big buzz on me. Huh! I oughter knowed 'twarn't nary overflow, 'cause tain't no houses, an' no levees. No trees ain't floatin' down, nothin', nothin' 'cept water. Dis is a mighty good place fer Baptists."
Zack grinned to himself, and watched for Miss Stanton. Then he leaned over the rail and gave himself up to a contemplation of the sea. "Well, well, well," he mumbled, "tain't nobody seed de beat o' dat. Jes like ole Missip was runnin' up an' down, an' sideways too—ev'y-which-way. Ef dis levee did break, hit's been a mighty long time ago, an' things got kinder settled down."
Zack hung over the rail and watched the fog that swirled upon the sea; a fine mist blew from the south. A sailor with rubber mop scraped the water from the deck, a deck as clean as Selina's kitchen table. Zack scarcely dared to step upon it. Other sailor men were beginning to hang strips of sail-cloth from the roof, and lash their flapping bottoms to the rail. The deck looked like those dripping lanes of canvas which led from the main circus to the side show. Zack couldn't remember a time when it hadn't rained on circus day in Vicksburg. Suddenly he straightened himself, and paid no more attention to the water; Miss Stanton came tripping along with a violin case under her arm. In order to shut off all allusion to overflows, Zack took first shot at the conversation: "Missy, is you gwine to play? Oughter hear ole man Jake play dat fiddle on Sherwood Plantation. He sets dem niggers crazy wid dancin' itch."
"No, I am not going to play; I only want to be sure that my violin is not strained: The case was bent this morning."
"Yas'm, dat's de time when I kep' 'em from shovin' you."
Doris Stanton wore a fur turban, so softly brown it seemed a part of her eyes and hair, and sun-tanned face. Zack rambled along behind her to the music room, stepped one foot inside the door and halted. The room was all white and gold and crimson, sparkling with pendants and mirrors; the furniture was so gilt and bench-legged, the carpet so crimson and Zack's foot sank so deep, that he instinctively drew back. "Huh! mighty few white folks oughter go in dere—an' no niggers a tall!"
But nobody hindered him. Miss Stanton had disappeared in a corner behind some kind of a gingerbread screen. Zack glanced around him, cautiously deposited his hat on that crimson car pet, passed inside the door, and followed her—picking up one foot after the other, like a rooster walking in deep mud.
Her violin case now lay open on the table, and Miss Stanton was taking out a green cloth. She wiped the instrument affectionately, and began to look it over in every seam and string and crevice. Zack turned his head this way and that, craned his neck and twisted his eyes in harmony with her movements. She drew her sigh in the treble, and Zack drew his in the bass. "It's all right, ain't it, Missy?" he asked.
"Yes," she nodded, then drew the bow, ever so lightly, across a string, and laid it down again. "What a tone you have!" she whispered and patted her best-beloved friend. The instrument rested against her shoulder and she caressed it with her chin; two slender fingers danced along its unawakened strings. Presently she picked up the bow and with a movement indescribably graceful stroked the chords so gently that they only purred.
"Ain't you gwine to play none, Missy?" Zack's inquiry was a prayer, yet Miss Stanton shook her head and glanced around at the shaded lights, through the crimson-and-gold silence of that deserted room. Outside the fog gathered like twilight; when twilight had settled in the valleys at home she always played her violin.
Unconsciously she lifted the bow and roused one long low note, as the sigh of a sleeper who begins to stir. Zack caught his breath, then begged, "Missy, play 'Ole Black Jo'; jes, a teeny bit."
Without dissent or volition the violin responded, inaudibly but distinctly, when Zack bent closer. He could almost hear the murmured words, "I'm comin'—I'm comin'." When it was quite done he whispered again, "Now, Missy, play 'Swanee Ribber.'"
Miss Stanton forgot, forgot the ship, and forgot these stranger-people, forgot the dismal evening, the raucous fog-horns, forgot everything. Out from her soul, and the soul of her violin that tender melody ebbed and flowed, lapping like the waves at the vessel's side; it filled the room with shadowy music; creeping out into the mist, it floated along deck, stopping men at their steady tramp, tramp, tramp—drawing them to the port holes, and in at the door. The girl's figure swayed imperceptibly, like a slender column of smoke on a windless day. Zack stood silent, bowing his gray bald head in unison with the old familiar song. His lips moved, but made no sound.
Their backs were to the door. They did not see man after man, woman after woman, slip in and sit upon the edges of their chairs. They did not see one glorious figure, standing erect in the center of the room, glittering in black and silver, with a scarlet rose in her hair—Signorina Aurora Certosa dressed for dinner, one jeweled hand upon her bosom, the other commanding silence from those behind her. Reifenstein had stopped midway the room, half starting forward, like a blond giant from his North German forest, listening. Doris Stanton did not see the groups of eyes that peered in at every port hole, nor the wall of faces massed at the door.
"Dar's whar my heart is turning ebber" the clear notes rose like a rocket and came back again in a shower of broken stars. Then something snapped. "Oh, I can't play it" The little Southern girl stopped short, laid down the violin and flung herself across the table. Zack wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "Dar now, Missy, dar now" Then Zack stared at those people who rushed suddenly toward them, like water bursting through a broken levee.
Signorina Aurora ran forward impetuously, fell on one knee, and put her arm around Miss Stanton's waist. The girl struggled to her feet, amazed. "Oh! I'm so ashamed," she said, "so sorry—I—I—forgot."
"Sorry? Ashamed? You glorious child; Bellissimi! Magnifica!" Then the homesick girl broke down completely. Aurora looked up at the thronging passengers. "Go away," she ordered, "avanti. Go" Reifenstein bent low, kissed the tiny brown hand that trembled so nervously on the table, then turned with uplifted arms and cleared the room.
Signorina Aurora led Miss Stanton to a divan, and drew the brown head upon her breast. "La mia piccina—now tell me all about it." The self-contained and close-lipped Southerner could not have imagined herself talking so freely to a stranger—all about the homesickness, all about the loneliness, and the going away to Milan for five long years.
"Your mother," the sympathetic diva inquired, "is she with you?"
"No; mother's at home."
"Your sister; your"
Doris shook her head, "Nobody."
"You're not alone? Ma che! Bambino! That will never do—never. So young, so beautiful, and alone."
This same question had been so maddeningly discussed at home that Doris Stanton answered sharply, with all the confidence of a kitten spatting in a corner, "Yes, I'm alone, and quite able to take care of myself, thank you."
The wiser woman only smiled, and stroked the child's arm, "Going to Milan for five years; ah, but you Americans have so ridiculously much money, and"
Miss Stanton shook her head, "I have very little, very little. I shall support myself while I study." The great singer smiled again, and whispered, "Carissima fanciullo! Impossible."
The Signorina Aurora was very practical. She knew what it meant to support herself and study. She, like Doris, had been far too pretty for Milan, Vienna, Leipsic, Munich. So she held the girl very close, patted her brown hair, and talked of ways and means. Nobody could resist this woman: Doris Stanton told her exactly how much money she had in that scanty wallet which was entrusted to the purser—not the price of one song from the Signorina Aurora.
"Now, now," the singer said, "we shall mend that. I give you a benefit; I, Aurora Certosa, I have promised. You shall play. Ah, so wonderful you play; I shall sing once, twice, three times. There! In Milan you will live like one little brown princess—and when I come to Milan—ah, when I come, we shall see what we shall see." With her arm about Doris, the singer led her new-made friend away.
The first dinner on shipboard is apt to be a key-note affair. Acquaintances may be formed or not. Ultra-fashionable ladies, crossing to be measured for gloves, make known their missions and their exclusiveness at this function. One stiff bow at the table sets no precedent for another bow on deck.
Mr. J. Blair Eaton and Joe Sloan sitting next each other at dinner was an accident of Joe's contrivance—one sovereign to the steward. Joe accounted for the presence of Prince Jim at the same table upon precisely the same basis—another sovereign to the steward. Joe carried out his part of the program, nevertheless, by attracting Mr. Eaton's attention to Cap Wright, his big partner, who sat in full view, the only man in the room without a dinner coat. "There's that old lake captain over yonder; he knows your sister's brother-in-law in Chicago. Made a big fortune with his steamers from Chicago to Duluth. Plays poker like a child."
"Ah, really," observed Mr. Eaton.
Colonel Spottiswoode was no lady; neither did he feel the necessity for being exclusive. His manner of speaking directly to a fellow-being startled Mr. J. Blair Eaton out of his eye glasses and into an approximately human reply. The Colonel's frankly expressed ignorance as to who Mr. J. Blair Eaton was appealed to that gentleman's sense of humor. "Really refreshing, don't you know, refreshing," Mr. Eaton confided to Joe Sloan.
But it did not refresh Cap Wright when Joe Sloan, after dinner, darted into his cabin with the information that their fresh fish had taken up with Prince Jim, and wouldn't play poker unless "The Colonel" were invited.
"I suspected something like that," observed the Cap, "suspected it when I seen 'em settin' side by side."
In Cap Wright's business it was necessary to think quickly; that is their job. "The joke's on us, Joe; we'll have to grin. But Prince Jim is square, so we'd better get half than nothing. Invite him. If you don't invite him, he'll give a poker party and leave us out. No, siree! Prince Jim don't associate with gamblers."
"Ain't that hell?" Joe burst out. "Here I've been nursing that Eaton chap for three months—went to Chicago and got acquainted with his sister. O. K. credentials like that, and he quits me cold for the first stranger that comes along. Ain't that hell?"
"Shut up, Joe. Hell ain't no argument—that's a cuss word."