The Wedding Journey

I

SHE had often heard her mother say that freeing Negroes made them impudent, and for a moment she thought that the packet-boat stewardess was going to be an impudent nigger. When she asked her name, the black girl replied, ‘Viney, miss,’ and then asked, as if she were hostess on the boat instead of merely a hired servant, ‘An’ what’s yo’ name, miss?’

Bella, who had been Bella Vincent only six short hours ago, felt her cheeks grow pink. She tried to look at Viney coolly and to make her voice sound matter-of-fact; but when the words came out they were quick, almost hushed. ‘I’m Mrs. Willcox.’

There it was. She had often said it to herself, — ’Mrs. Willcox,’ — but now it was a fact before the world. The marriage ceremony, her father reading the service, the flowers on the altar and the flowers round her veil, her mother sniffing softly, and her sister Clorinda behind her, the music, even Roger, putting the ring on her finger — all those things seemed parts of the properly ordered climax of her maidenhood. But now that she had said to this pert-looking Negro girl, ‘I’m Mrs. Willcox,’ she knew that she was married.

Viney’s bright eyes regarded her so knowingly that she had a sudden impulse to run out of the cabin and find Roger. But she needed sprucing after the dusty stage ride from Albany to the Schenectady dock; she wanted to look her best at supper that evening; and inside of her she felt that somehow it was important to the success of her marriage to assert herself before this girl.

Viney, fingering the white apron that neatly covered her red dress, bobbed her bandanna’d head and curtsied unexpectedly. Then, as she raised her black face again, her limber mouth opened and she showed all her teeth in a beaming smile.

‘You jes’ married, Mis’ Willcox?’

Bella nodded, blushing again.

‘Lawsy!’ Viney breathed. ‘’T ain’t often I got a bran’-new honeymoon lady to look after. I trust yo’ trip will be pleasurable, Mis’ Willcox.’

She bent down for the bags with a submissive droop of her shoulders, and Bella realized that she was n’t an impudent nigger after all. She was only trying to be friendly.

‘Which bed you like the bes’, Mis’ Willcox?’

Bella glanced round the ladies’ cabin. She had never been on a canal packet before, and it looked very strange to her. In spite of the white paneling and the bright red curtains at the windows, the red-clothed table and the brass-shaded lamp, the room seemed small and bald. The beds were stanchions hinged from the walls; canvas was laced across the iron frame, and resting on it was the thinnest conceivable mattress.

‘There’s only two other ladies,’ Viney said. ‘They ain’t got here yet, so you can have yo’ pick, Mis’ Willcox.’

Bella said, ‘Maybe that one in the front.’

Viney started to move towards it. Then she halted, still holding on to the bags, and said tactfully, ‘That sure is the quietest. But you don’t get so good air, and the nights they been hot lately, mis’.’

‘Perhaps you’re right, Viney. Which one would you recommend?’

Viney pursed her lips.

‘ Well, if I was a lady making selection of these beds, mis’, I’d declare for this one in the corner. I reckon I’d get mo’ air. And though it’s right next the saloon wall and I’d hear the gentlemen playing ca’ds, it’s mos’ apt I’d hear them anyways. It’s nice to have a corner bed too, with walls to yo’ head. And then you’d have me handy to call me if you want me in the night.’

‘Where do you sleep, Viney?’

Viney giggled.

‘Don’ get much sleep sometimes, but I got a pallet on the floor there.’ She indicated the floor beside the door to the main saloon.

‘I think I’ll take the corner bed, then,’ Bella said with definiteness. Viney nodded. She laid Bella’s bags against the wall and asked whether she should open them.

‘You can open the big one, Viney.’

‘Does yo’ want to change?’

Bella hesitated. She would like to go right out to Roger, but the prospect of fresh clothes was enticing.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’d like the green dress.’

Viney said, ‘ If you like to wash yo’self, I’ll show you where.’

Bella nodded, and Viney conducted her to the door in the far corner, where, in a little closet, she found pitcher and basin and soap. Taking her own towel and brush and comb, she rubbed off the dry sandy dust that seemed to have coated her from head to foot. She did up her hair again, using the green net that matched her dress, and studied herself in the small glass.

It was a very young face that looked back at her: a small straight nose, a small pointed chin. Only the warm brown eyes with their straight, rather heavy, black brows and curling lashes, and the wide mobile mouth, the upper lip so short it seemed to tremble on the verge of smiling, kept it from being insignificant. It was an eager face, so live it seemed to shy at life, and almost naïvely honest.

But it did not satisfy her at all. She wished it could have been blond and beautiful like her sister’s: Clorinda was the kind of girl that people looked at. She was almost as tall as Roger. As Aunt Francine had often said, ‘There’s nothing statuesque about Bella.’ All the family had expected, when he first came to call, that he had his eye on Clorinda. Even Clorinda had n’t troubled to deny it. The fact that it was now Bella who found herself in the ladies’ washroom on the Western Lion, bound for Buffalo and Ohio, the wife of Roger Willcox, seemed utterly, delightfully incredible.

As she pulled out her curls before her ears, Bella found that she was smiling back at the face in the glass. ‘Red as a garden radish,’ she whispered.

Then, just outside the window, she heard a man’s feet walking up and down the passenger dock. As she recognized the step, rather deliberate, a little heavy, the walk of a big man, her flush waved deeper. Roger was waiting for her. She had married him that morning. She would never forget to-day with its warm high clouds sailing loftily — August 18, 1835. But she forgot the final pat for her hair. Leaving her towel and brush and comb lying whichway for the colored girl to pick up, she rushed out into the cabin.

Viney was exclaiming softly over the green dress.

‘Quick,’ said Bella. ‘Oh, quick, Viney.’

She slipped out of her traveling dress and held up her arms. She stood for an instant that way in her shift, with the striped sunlight from the shutters marking her, slim and still and white. With a hushed murmuring sound, the Negro girl passed the green dress over Bella’s arms and patted it down. Bella’s fingers flew over the laces.

‘ Give me my bonnet, Viney. And the blue scarf.’

She was gone through the door.

Viney, slowly folding the traveling dress, listened to the rapid tap of Bella’s feet traversing the saloon, running up the steps to the deck, and suddenly turning demure.

‘Lawsy!’ she breathed.

II

Bella came out into the bright glare on deck and glanced over the passenger dock,’looking for Roger. When her eyes found him, her heart gave a little jump. He was standing with his back to her, talking to an elderly man. But Bella did not look at the stranger. At sight of Roger’s broad shoulders filling his blue coat, the buff trousers fitting his narrow hips and straight legs so perfectly, the close-cut, curly black hair just showing under the brim of his hat, she felt suddenly shy.

His back was to her, but she knew exactly how his hands were folded on the head of his stick; she knew that the right wing of his stock was a little too long; she could tell from the bend of his head that he was smiling politely. But seeing him so, talking to an utter stranger, it came over her that she did not know Roger at all. And she was on a canal packet, a public conveyance. There was no familiar atmosphere of family life for her to retreat into now.

When Roger had stepped into her father’s study to tell him their news, she had gone upstairs to find her mother. Her mother was sewing in a corner of the sitting room, where she had her table and a view down Hawk Street, and when Bella had come in she had said, ‘Good gracious, Bella! What is it?’ And on Bella’s telling her she had been very much surprised. ‘Of course, Mr. Willcox comes of very good stock, but his family have been west for so many years now, I hardly feel I know them any more. I’m sure he’s a worthy young man. His manners are good, certainly. Your father will know.’ She always took refuge from responsibility in her husband ’s opinions.

But Clorinda had been even more surprised. ‘Don’t tease, Bella!’ she had exclaimed. There had been spots of red in her cheeks; she had looked almost hectic; but as soon as she had been convinced she had said, ’Your brats will be blacker than Portuguese.’

The wind pushed Bella’s skirts against her knees, and she found that they were trembling. She knew that she was flushing again; she wished she could conquer that ridiculous weakness; but it had been a stupid thing for Clorinda to say, even if she were piqued.

A blaring horn almost deafened her right ear.

‘Don’t worry, ma’am. That’s only a freight boat.’

One of the Western Lions crew was standing beside her on t he steering deck. She glanced at his weather-lined hard face and found him smiling. He was pointing to the other side of the basin, where a thin pair of mules bowed down against their collars. The driver walked behind them; his blue shirt was open to the sun and wind all the way down to his belt, so that she could see his chest naked and furred. He was swinging a heavy long-lashed whip with a short stock. While Bella watched he cut the nearest mule across the withers, leaving a black welt. The beast clamped back its ears. She saw it shudder from the stroke.

The boat came by at the end of the hundred-foot towrope. Its square bow, the paint yellow and faded, thrust heavily against the ripple. A woman was cramming her arms with wash from a line stretched over the pit. The wind tugged her skirt back between her legs, moulding them so close that Bella saw she wore no underthings. The steersman, hip against the rudder stick, yelled to the woman as he lifted his horn to his lips. His cheeks filled and emptied, and the blare again was deafening. The woman nodded her head sullenly to what he had told her and stepped out in her bare feet on the catwalk. The wash made a red and white puff under her face, like a bunch of preposterous flowers; and, as their eyes met, Bella saw with astonishment that the woman could not be more than eighteen years old and that, in a rough way, she was handsome. The girl managed to toss her chin above the wash, but when she turned in front of the steersman he struck her shoulder with his fist, spat over the side, wiped his mouth, and grinned at Bella.

‘Rough, tough, and nasty,’ the packetboat hand at her side said scornfully.

She did not answer him, but turned quickly to go to Roger. She felt frightened and upset and close to tears; she wanted to be near, to touch someone she knew. She had never seen a woman struck before.

Roger was walking back along the dock beside the elderly gentleman, his head slightly bowed to catch the other’s words. He looked so calm, he walked so almost solemnly, — the way he looked when he first walked into the house on Eagle Street, — that she was glad he was not actually too handsome. ‘But he is handsome,’ she said to herself. ‘Clorinda thought so.’ And her heart gave a little bounce as she moved towards the plank, steadying her skirts with both hands. She felt as sure as anyone could be that Roger would never strike her.

She looked up for an instant as she stepped on the plank and caught his eye. His face had a high even color, his mouth was composed and serious, but his eyes crinkled slightly at the corners. He looked amused at something; she wondered uneasily whether he could have read her thoughts.

She ran down the plank to the dock and found herself meeting the admiring gaze of the elderly gentleman.

‘Bella, this is Mr. Atterbury. He’s making the trip west to Buffalo on our boat. Mr. Atterbury, this is my wife.’

Roger looked prodigiously tall and strong, and Bella felt an almost suffocating pride in him. She curtsied formally to Mr. Atterbury, but she could hardly take her eyes off Roger in time to avoid an impoliteness.

Mr. Atterbury had removed his hat and laid it gently against his waistcoat. He was dressed quietly and elegantly in a black coat that seemed, however, a little travel-worn. His face she thought gentlemanly, with a narrow chiseled nose and a pleasant mouth under a white moustache; and he had waving white hair.

‘It is n’t often, I assure you, Mrs. Willcox, that an old traveler like myself faces a long journey lightened by the prospect of such delightful company.’

He sounded almost old-fashioned to her, and his bow was low. Glancing out of the corner of her eye, Bella saw Roger draw himself up a little taller. He was n’t looking at either of them; he had a fixed look in his eye that she had noticed once when Mrs. Vincent had invited their Albany relations to meet him. Guiltily she realized that she must have seemed a long time in the ladies’ cabin to Roger. But she gave Mr. Atterbury a smile and her glove to touch and said that she also anticipated a delightful trip.

As he smiled to them both she saw how bright his blue eyes were and thought that before his hair turned it must have been very fair.

Mr. Atterbury was saying, ‘Could n’t we sit together at supper, we three?’

Bella felt her hand drawn under Roger’s arm. He said, ‘Yes. That would be splendid,’ and bowed stiffly.

Mr. Atterbury handed his satchel to the boatman and followed him aboard.

III

‘Darling,’ Roger said quietly, ‘you’re perfectly lovely.’

Bella allowed her fingers to press his forearm and felt them hugged tight against his ribs. She was sure she could feel his ribs through the coat and she thought she could also feel his heart thumping inside.

He was walking her down the dock, his free hand holding his watch out of the fob pocket.

‘We’ll be starting in ten minutes,’ he said aloud for the benefit of some dock loafers. ‘It does n’t look as if we’d have many passengers.’

But as soon as they were out of earshot his voice filled and he bent over close to her ear.

‘Do you think you can stand it, dear?’

‘What, Roger?’

‘Being cooped up on that boat four whole days?’

She looked up at him, startled by the baffled note in his voice, For an instant his eyes seemed too close to bear. Her knees went weak under her and she had to hold hard on his arm, feeling herself enveloped by his impatience until she was almost sick. She caught the toe of her shoe in the hem of the green dress, and felt him lift and steady her. The warm wind blew in her face, her head cleared, and she thought, ‘He’s never seen this dress and he has n’t even noticed it yet.’ But he had told her she was lovely, and she had seen that he thought she was beautiful, and that seemed so wonderful that nothing else mattered. For Clorinda had been the beauty of the family — it had always been spoken of at home. And then Bella realized that the things taken for granted at home had no more standing for her in the world. There were just she and Roger. There were no comforting retreats left to her. Nothing except the ladies’ cabin of the Western Lion. She did not know what she thought about that; she did not know what to say.

She did n’t have to answer.

Roger said abruptly: ‘It’s always hard waiting for a boat to start.’

He had stopped her at the end of the packet dock and was looking up the canal, his broad chin set and a thin crease between his eyes. His arm was solid under her hand, he stood very straight, and she realized gratefully that he was n’t asking her to answer. It was almost as if he understood.

Her pride returned and she lifted her chin as she stood at his side, so that they looked west together. They could see all the town that lay west of them, the brick houses with their gardens to the river and the smoke from their chimneys climbing against the late afternoon sky; and, leading straight away along the southern bank of the river, the canal, boats moving on it here and there, the mules in the distance like teams of ants harnessed by spider threads to chips; and then the green country, and the hills rolling gently to right and left, gathering a blue haze in their valleys.

A bugle sounded, and they wheeled hurriedly to find that behind their backs the boat had come to life. The captain was stepping decisively out from the passenger agent’s box; two women and three men were crowding up the plank to the deck; and a couple of men had taken hold of the tie ropes, holding them in their hands, their heads turned towards the steersman. A quick thump of hoofs sounded across the dock, and a pair of horses, hitched tandem, came out of the street and took a stand a little ahead of the bow. A handler hooked the singletree to the towrope, and a driver boy, like a red-jacketed active little monkey, scrambled up to his saddle on the rear horse. The captain cast his eye over everything. He was standing on the top deck, bugle in hand.

‘Aboard!’ he shouted.

He lifted his bugle to his lips.

Bella felt Roger almost swing her off her feet.

‘Come on,’ he said.

She had no idea that they had come so far from the boat. They would have to run. Roger tightened his grip on her arm. He was half carrying her. She stole a look up at him, knowing she could not fall while he held her. All the baffled helplessness was gone from his face. He turned his head suddenly and gave her a whole-souled grin.

‘Run, Bella,’ he said. ‘I don’t think our bags would have much fun without us, even at Niagara Falls.’

Under her skirts Bella’s feet ran smoothly to match his long stride. The wind rocked her skirts under her from side to side, so that she seemed to skim over the rough planking. Her face was bright and hot as she caught the captain’s hand, to be steadied up the gangplank.

The captain was smiling at her, the steersman was smiling at her, so were the passengers who had arrived late.

Roger handed her up to the deck that made a roof for the saloon and helped her arrange her scarf.

‘We’re off,’ he said. ‘Four days, darling. Then we’ll go out to Niagara and have a week to ourselves, just you and me.’

‘And the bags,’ Bella said demurely.

‘You’re baggage enough for me,’ he said.

She turned very pink on discovering that the captain had come up to them and was listening tolerantly to everything they said. He wheeled to wave his arm at the passenger agent. ‘Got the time?’ he bawled. ‘Write it down.’ He walked to the edge of the deck and shouted to the two men, forty feet away, to cast off the ropes. You could see that the captain knew his importance.

He looked over his shoulder at Roger and said, ‘Four days? Well, I’ll give you a run for your money, mister. Maybe I ’ll shade it under four days. It’s a light trip and we’re out to bust time wide open. The company’s given me a hundred dollars to pay my fines for speeding.’

‘ If you do it under four days I ’ll buy you a parcel of the finest segars in Buffalo,’ Roger said; and the captain laughed at them.

‘ Don’t worry, mister. I’ve had couples like you on this packet before, and though I never figured out why they was in such a lather to get a look at Niagara Falls, I always got them there in time.’

He slapped the end of the bugle to his mouth, and the notes rang over the town. Dock-wallopers stopped wrestling with bales and barrels to see the Western Lion start; Red Bird packets were fliers, and knew how to start in style. They cheered as the team took up the slack. The driver boy shrilled profanely at his horses and swung his whip.

‘Feed it to them, boy,’ the captain roared. ‘Pump it in.’

The caulks of the team’s shoes ripped splinters from the planks. They shook up a trot. Under her feet Bella felt a tremor from their tugs. A ripple forked from the stern, jellying the reflections against the dock piles. Well ahead, a freight boat, hauling out of town, swung into midstream; their team stopped to let the rope lie on the towpath, and the packet team and packet boat passed over it while the freight crew looked on.

When they were past, Bella turned to watch the freight boat take up its way. The driver’s whip made pops of sound like the champagne corks at her wedding breakfast.

‘Feeling homesick?’ Roger asked.

‘No,’ said Bella honestly. It was only Schenectady she was leaving, the quaint brick houses, the crowded canal basin, and the great bridge — she had heard her father say it was the greatest bridge in all America. It was the first landmark on her journey, and, leaving it behind, she felt the world unfolding for her as the water unfolded for the packet’s bow.

IV

Mr. Neilson said, ‘I do not know whether you hold prayers on your boat at night, Captain Harrow, but if you would like them, or if the company would like them, I should be only too glad to oblige.’

Mr. Neilson was a minister returning to Rochester after a month’s sojourn at Ballston Spa. He explained that his devoted congregation insisted on his going there every summer to recuperate after the winter’s preaching. His heart was none too strong. This amused Bella and Roger and Mr. Atterbury, because, in addition to the brandy served with the water, Mr. Neilson had ordered himself a bottle of Old London port wine. He was an amply nourished individual in faultless clericals, and his wife seated herself where everyone could see the diamonds on her left hand. The entire company appeared relieved when the captain said, ‘Thank you, Mr. Neilson, but I’ll leave it to the passengers.’

Bella had a vague feeling that, if Mr. Neilson had been her father, instead of asking the captain he would have started prayers promptly at nine o’clock.

The steward cleared the table of dessert plates, and Mr. Atterbury ordered an apricot cordial for the three of them. Sipping the unaccustomed drink, Bella glanced round the saloon. It was wonderful to think that while they were eating this comfortable meal the boat was passing the riverside meadows at better than four miles an hour.

There was a pleasant coolness, and a faint fresh smell of grass under dew in the air fluttering the curtains. But the lamp slung over the table burned without flickering. There was no sound of travel, no rattle of trace links, no squeak of springs, no rumble of wheels. There was no sound at all but the roar of bullfrogs among lily pads in the setbacks, and since sunset that had been continual. Only when the driver boy’s voice came back to them shrilly crying, ‘Bridge!’ and the steersman answered, ‘Low bridge!’ were the passengers aware that every minute saw them farther west.

The supper had been pleasant; the company was a quiet one. Mrs. Neilson, indeed, described in intimate detail her very large acquaintanceship, all of whom appeared to be either wealthy or distinguished, but as soon as she had listed them she seemed to regard her social duty to the company as performed for the evening. The talk clung mildly to the weather, the crops, the growing tightness of credit, the animosity of President Jackson for Nicholas Biddle and the United States Bank, and the low price of pork. On this last subject they listened to the determined views of the traveler for the Troy Nail Works, who delivered his theories with punches as emphatic as one of his factory’s stamping engines. He was a small, spry man, wearing soiled clothes and an opulent watch fob, who had introduced himself as L. D. Jones. At supper he laid his half-smoked segar beside his plate — otherwise he kept it in the handiest corner of his mouth.

Besides Mr. L. D. Jones, the passenger list included the Willcoxes, Mr. Atterbury and the Neilsons, a Mr. Jason who was noncommittal about some properties in Illinois, and a Mrs. Cashdollar, a widow, who lived in Utica.

To Bella they seemed kind but dull. She could not help contrasting their appearance with Roger’s or their conversation with Mr. Atterbury’s.

Mr. Atterbury had had a career, and during supper he touched on it from time to time. Bella could not have said what his business consisted of, but it had apparently carried him all over the country. He seemed to know the best people in every state in the Union, from New Orleans to Boston, Massachusetts. He had traveled in every sort of conveyance, public and private — on steamboats, in sailing vessels, by horseback, alone, through the wildest parts of the continent. He had been on a flatboat going down the Ohio and had a brush with the river pirates; he had been held up by a highwayman on the Cumberland Road and got away not only with his life but with his money. He told his adventures with a light touch, his voice gentle, leaving to Bella’s and Roger’s imagination the more dramatic parts, He did not need to boast; the bare recital on that peaceful boat, his quiet face, his white hair, served his story well.

As she gazed round the saloon, making her eyes familiar with the order of packet-boat living, — from the folded bed stanchions, which the men would sleep on, to the kitchen door and the small library with its settee and bull’seye windows under the steersman’s deck, — Bella felt excited and gay. Her dark eyes were bright, her red lips curved, and when she laughed at something Mr. Atterbury said her laughter had a lilt that made even Mr. Neilson glance up from his contemplation of Old London. She did not mind the men’s glances. She could see from the corner of her eye that Roger was proud of her. Her heart warmed with friendliness for all of them. She did not even mind Mrs. Neilson’s veiled conveyance of hostility, nor Mrs. Cashdollar’s obvious amusement. She hardly noticed the two women. She was in Roger’s hands, and as long as he liked her she felt her spirits winged.

V

The boat slid along peacefully. Only Mr. L. D. Jones remained at table: his pot hat on the back of his head, the segar lifeless in the corner of his mouth, his order books spread out around him.

Mr. and Mrs. Neilson had disposed themselves in the library in such a manner that the entrance of anyone else would have seemed impertinent. Mr. Jason had taken a newspaper to the chair under the lamp beside the stairs, and Mrs. Cashdollar had retired to the ladies’ cabin, where her rather heavy voice could be heard in conversation with Viney.

Bella listened to Mr. Atterbury with counterfeit attentiveness. She felt Roger’s glance upon her profile and she was thinking, with the monotonous tick of the saloon clock in her ears, that Clorinda would by now have eluded her mother’s discussion of the wedding; she would have gone up to the room they used to share and begun her careful preparations for bed. And here was she, Bella, traveling with Roger, among strangers, farther west already than any of her family had ever been. She smiled to herself, thinking of Clorinda, but not unkindly, for Clorinda had lost.

Mr. Atterbury, seeing the smile, glanced casually at Roger, smiled himself, and brought his anecdote skillfully to a sudden ending. He rose from the bench and stepped across to one of the windows.

‘It’s a beautiful warm evening,’ he said. ‘I should think you two might like a turn on deck.’

Roger met Bella’s eyes.

‘Do you think it will be damp?’ he asked in his serious voice. ‘My wife is very sensitive to damp.’

She almost sputtered, but caught herself in time. He sat so solemn, he so nearly managed to look stodgy, that for an instant he had taken her in. In Albany she would never have suspected Roger of being capable of such deceit. They were only a few hours west of Schenectady, too, and she wondered, ‘What will he be like when we reach Buffalo?’ But she almost gurgled when Mr. Atterbury put his hand through the open window and said, ‘There’s quite a heavy dew, Mr. Willcox. You had better take cloaks for your wife.'

Nobody in the saloon seemed to be listening to them, but as she passed the table on her way to the ladies’ cabin she saw Mr. L. D. Jones, obviously thinking he was not observed, look up from His books and wink across his dead segar at Mr. Jason.

The lamp was low in the ladies’ cabin. Mrs. Cashdollar was propped up on her bed with a glass balanced on her ample stomach, and there was an unmistakable odor of whiskey. Viney stood at her side, holding a pitcher of fresh water.

At Bella’s entrance they both looked round, Viney with a properly expressionless face, Mrs. Cashdollar with a broad smile.

‘Going on deck, dearie?’ Mrs. Cashdollar asked. ‘It’s hot enough.’

Bella said, ‘Yes,’ stiffly.

She did not like Mrs. Cashdollar. The woman did not look quite proper.

‘I should think your boy was getting pretty impatient. It’s hard luck having a honeymoon on a packet boat.’

Bella said, ‘ Viney, please give me my cape.’

‘Ain’t it there by the bed?’ asked Mrs. Cashdollar.

‘I suppose it is,’ said Bella. ‘I asked Viney to give it to me.’

Mrs. Cashdollar took the pitcher from the Negress and said good-humoredly, ‘Go ahead, girlie.’

‘Yes, Mis’ Cashdollah. Yes, Mis’ Willcox.’

Viney fetched the cloak.

Mrs. Cashdollar regarded Bella’s flushed face with a friendly glance.

‘Dearie,’ she said, ‘you don’t like me because you’ve never seen anybody like me before. But I like you. If you’ll take a suggestion, you’ll get on to the bow deck and sit against the wall. I thought of that when I picked this bow bed. You can sit there and I’ll keep that Neilson cat from having Viney open the window and you can kiss all you want to and nobody’ll hear you.’

Bella flushed furiously.

‘Don’t get mad. You don’t have to. But take a little pity on your boy, dearie. And if you want blankets, just tap on the window and I’ll have Viney pass them out.’

Accepting her cloak, Bella said, ‘Thank you,’ very formally, and went out.

VI

Roger was waiting for her at the saloon steps. Mr. Atterbury was hunting in his bag for a segar. None of the others appeared to notice them, so Bella slipped across to Roger and took his arm and they went on deck.

There they found the night and the country, and the steersman leaning idly on the rudder stick while the banks slipped past him.

‘Evening, ma’am and sir,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s clear to-night.’

‘Good evening,’ Roger said.

‘Good evening,’ said Bella.

Her heart filled with the quiet and the coolness and the warm firm touch of Roger’s arm under her fingers. She drew her skirts over her knees and climbed the short flight to the top deck with him. From there they looked out over the towpath.

The moon had not yet risen, but a mist lay on the Mohawk, and there was starlight on the mist. They were passing a long riverside pasture, so narrow that the sound of the water against the riverbanks was audible. A herd of cows grazed below the towpath. Now and then, when one lifted her head, they heard a bell clank gently.

The pressure of Roger’s arm drew Bella forward. The driving lantern on the bow standard shed a yellow luminance against the canal bank, showing them the reeds and the grass slipping backward, and rocking lily pads with their stiff blooms like golden goblets. The air was damp against their faces and carried here a scent of ferns. From the tow cleat, twelve feet back on the right side of the boat, the towrope curved up towards the towpath like a silver cord.

Bella pressed herself against Roger’s side as they stood together. His arm jerked suddenly from hers and stole round under the cape, round her waist, enfolding her, until she felt herself enveloped. She felt herself in darkness under her cape, as if it were a private world, and he had entered it.

He said softly, ‘Four days. There is n’t a corner where someone can’t see you.’

His arm shook. She was quite still; she felt poised, so light that if a wind had come upon her suddenly only his arm would have held her to the boat.

‘Roger,’ she whispered, ‘could n’t we go down on that front deck and sit with our backs against the ladies’ cabin?’

‘It’s right in the light,’ he said.

‘I know, Roger, but the steersman could n’t see us. And Mrs. Cashdollar said she would pass out blankets if we tapped on the window.’

‘Mrs. Neilson would hear us.’

‘Mrs. Cashdollar promised to keep her from opening the bow windows.’

‘Bless her, you darling.’

Forward in the darkness out along the towpath, the driver boy’s voice cried, ‘Bridge!’

Suddenly they heard the team’s hoofs trotting; then the silence swallowed the hoofbeats.

‘Low bridge!’ the steersman called behind them. The towrope was disappearing into blackness. The timbers of the bridge loomed.

‘Hey, mister. Down!’

Roger jumped from the saloon deck on to the forward deck. He turned in the light of the lantern and held up his arms.

‘Quick,’ he said.

Bella felt her heart spring in her breast as she met his eyes. The cape fluttered behind her; his hands caught her and she was against his chest; and her cape flew forward like wings about them both. She lifted her face and his lips came down on hers.

Roger let her go, and for the first time her feet came against the deck. But she stood still inside her cloak, with no breath in her, and her mouth still raised and her eyes closed.

He laughed softly and kissed her eyes.

On the rear deck the steersman was glancing out at the far bank and whistling ‘Red River Girl.’ They stepped from each other and looked round. Two warm blankets lay under the window, and pinned to one of them by a hairpin was a piece of paper bearing in an illiterate scrawl: ‘I heard the old cat coming in and passed them out for you.’

They read it, laughing softly together.

‘Do you know what she does, Bella?’

‘No.’

‘Captain Harrow says she runs a cook’s agency for bachelor boaters. That is, she supplies boatmen with women for their boats.’

Bella laughed and looked at Roger.

‘Do you suppose she’ll send you a bill?’

‘ You little devil! You ’re the most surprising girl for a minister’s daughter. I don’t believe you’d mind if it was in the way of business.’

Bella looked at him. In the light his close black curls were sculptured, his ear clear-cut as marble.

‘I don’t believe I should,’ she said honestly.

He leaned forward to arrange their blankets and realized that he held her hands.

They laughed again.

He let go her hands and spread the blankets so that they sat with their backs against the wall and their faces following the towrope, with the lantern light full on them.

She said, ‘It’s private from the boat all right, but all the world could see us.’

‘The world’s asleep, darling.’

‘Suppose the driver boy looked back?’

‘Suppose he did?’

‘Do you think he’d be upset if you kissed me, Roger?’

‘Any man on earth would be upset. That’s why I married you.’

‘We could hold hands, though,’ Bella said demurely.

VII

The canal came towards them, evenly and quietly. They heard the wash against the bow and the whisper of the waterside weeds, arrowhead and dancegrass. They saw a rat swim out from the opposite shore and his eyes pick out the lantern light like two hot flecks of mica, and then he wheeled smoothly and paddled water till they passed. Once in a while they heard a boat horn, which the distance made sad; but at each succeeding blast it became louder and more dissonant, until at last they saw the light floating towards them, so slow, so easy, and so silent. And then they heard the panting of the team and saw them for a long instant in the lantern light; their hung heads and their lathered forelegs; their laboring sides; their bellies round and hard with strain; and their haunches riveted in thrust. Then the wash of the bows; and the boat’s lantern light was married to the packet light, and their hands met under the blanket.

Sometimes the steersman of the passing boat noticed them. Then he said nothing; or he raised his arm, or made a buzzing noise in his horn like a bee buzzing in the trumpet of a lily; or he called good night, or yodeled. But sometimes he never noticed them, and as the darkness redefined their lantern they kissed each other to reward his blindness. Sometimes their own steersman hailed the freight boat, and the two men bandied words a moment and left off, breaking a phrase.

Once they heard a bugle and saw the faster light of another packet. The driver boys cut at each other’s teams, and their whips writhed into an embrace and fell apart. The boat came by with the ladies’ windows darkened like their own, but one light burned in the saloon, and they saw two men throwing dice.

They watched the broad gleam from the doors of a change-stable beside the towpath, and saw the new team waiting and a boy ready-mounted, and a man standing behind them to catch the hook from the old team and fasten on the new. There was a smell of bedded horses as they passed the barn. The new team was linked to them in darkness as they moved, so that the boat never lost way.

They came into a lock, their bugle winging its notes far forward. The lock keeper had the level ready for them. He stood by the walking beam in his nightshirt, a lantern in his hand, a hat on his head, and his beard white as Noah’s. The packet slid into the yawning gateway, which closed behind them, and the team rested while the water, like a hand, raised them up between the great gray blocks of stone until they saw the canal again faintly stretching from the opened gates and went away along it with the sound of the waste water on the tumbling bay.

They seemed to drift upon the water with a motion as unearthly as the wheel of the stars that traveled on the water with them. Bella felt herself grow sleepy without tiredness; she felt her husband’s warmth steal into her, and her own warmth steal into his; and she thought, ‘ I am his wife now,’ and she wished that she might be a good one to him, and it occurred to her that she was in love with him, and she wondered whether he was in love with her and whether he would love the things she loved.

She went with him on tiptoe into the saloon. There was a sound of snoring from Mr. Jason’s bed. There was only a faint ring of yellow in the lamp chimney. But she saw the shoes of the men, and Mr. L. D. Jones’s unconsumed segar, and she smelled men sleeping, and she was afraid for a minute; so, under cover of her cape, when they came to the ladies’ door, she put both arms round Roger to make sure of him again.

But she felt ill at ease entering the ladies’ cabin. Viney rolled the whites of her eyes and got up from her bed on the floor, breathing gently, and helped her to undress. The black hands made a mystery of the act.

The women looked gross in their blankets; Mrs. Neilson was noisy in her sleep, and Mrs. Cashdollar’s red hair made a stain on the pillow.

‘Good night, Viney,’ Bella whispered.

‘Good night, Mis’ Willcox.’

The black hands, smoothing the blankets over her, were comforting. Bella turned her face to the wall and wept, being homesick.

(To be continued)