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Chapter VIII · G.T.T., or The Wonderful Adventures of a Pullman

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  Chapter eight of Gone to Texas or The Wonderful Adventures of a Pullman by Edward
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  Hale. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter eight. And
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  Effie never once reviled Hester, nor said it was you who set at riverboat,
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  as always behind time. Ten minutes saw the carriage at the door.
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  Ten minutes more, saw the girls in the carriage. In ten minutes more
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  they were in the Chester. Boon had been introduced to her clerk by the
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  young man whom the hotel clerk had sent with them, And this officer had
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  said to them that they would be amused by the view from the pilot house.
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  He had explained alas that the champer noons were not on board. After
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  all, He had escorted them up to the lofty pilot house, and there,
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  of course they found not Frederick Haydock nor Hiram Brinkerhoff, but the Doctor
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  of Divinity. And he explained to them what they could never have known.
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  My dear, said Effie, in a half a side. Do you see
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  they are beginning the pyramids? Do you see those heaps of square stones half
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  way up the bluff? In fact, these solid heaps looked like causeways for
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  giants, where the giants preferred to have the stepping stones square rather than hexagonal.
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  They frowned down upon the waves of the fresh At those cubicle stones,
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  Madam said, the agent of the publishing board are paving stones. When the
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  river goes down, the bank will be paved with them. Why have they
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  only just come, said Effie. Oh no, indeed, said he,
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  laughing. But they are too valuable to be swept down by the flood.
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  They are taken up before it comes and stored there against the dry weather.
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  To this hour. Effie does not know whether he was chaffing her, but
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  he was not. Both of them had their sketch books out. It was
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  all so fascinating. They never tired of the mules. They were so queer.
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  Every black boy was more wildly picturesque, not to say mysterious in his
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  oddity than his predecessor. The chester Boone did not quite keep to her promise
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  of half an hour, But in an hour from the time when Effie set
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  her palate, the chester Boone and the travelers were under way, and the
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  kind doctor of Divinity showed the ladies their first Indian mound. Ah. If
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  it were the duty of this writer, only to make a little romance in
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  six parts of the Sale from Memphis to Helena. Material enough is there,
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  though that romance should be the three orthodox volumes of mister Murray. But as
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  was before said, but wiser Fate says, no unwritten be the history of
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  that evening, unwritten, its songs, its theological conversations, its weird torchlight
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  landings, the dance in the after cabin, the poker in the cabin.
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  Before the next morning, the ladies met by appointment early that they might have
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  a walk on the forward deck upstairs before breakfast and see the sunrise. The
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  sunrise was, of course beautiful, but as it happened on this morning,
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  it had not the grandeur of the sunset. The morning was cold enough for
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  them to want to walk briskly, and everything was exciting and interesting. The
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  tow heads, as the queer tufts at the end of the cutoffs are called,
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  the occasional passage of the boat through a cut off, the tints of
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  green beginning to appear on the shore, and once the salute of the Montezuma
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  as they met her blithely working her way up the river. Such things,
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  all strange, kept them on the lookout, then the profound solitude that this
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  giant ship which bore them should be forging on through this wilderness where but that
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  they had seen the Montezuma, there was no other sign of man, and
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  she she left only that faint shred of smoke on the air to show that
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  she had lived. That smoke, wraith represents history, dear Hester. But
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  just as Effie said this, there was a token of man's being Again.
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  A ting on the pilot's bell made them look up to him, and then
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  they climbed to his friendly house to ask what maneuver was in progress. He
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  pointed far far away and compelled them to see a little speck which he said
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  was a flag, a signal. So the great boat devoured the waters,
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  made nothing of the miles between, and before the ladies could believe it was
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  near enough to the rag or flag for them to see a man standing on
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  a little strip of green, which the pilot said was the levee, water
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  behind him, water before him. He looked like Campbell's last man, or
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  like some algonkins. First it was he who had shown the flag. The
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  pilot explained that a road ran along the top of the levee, where the
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  country was not flooded, and by this road the man had come. In
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  fact, after a few minutes he pointed out the wagon which the man had
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  left in the bush beyond Nearer the boat swept, and nearer the figure of
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  the man. His features were perfectly plain. The boat touched, the gangway
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  was lowered. Two black men ran down from the chester Boon and seized the
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  stranger's wallet and saddle bags. He ran up the plank with them, and
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  the boat was off. It was Frederick Haydock. He hurried on board,
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  and before his foot had well touched the deck, the great gangway rose and
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  pointed heavenward again. The pilot's bells struck, ting ting. The giant snorted
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  his satisfaction, and the chester Boon resumed her way through what was solitude again.
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  Now that she had absorbed this little atom of outside life, Effie waited
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  for an instant, just an instant, for Hester to speak first, as
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  she almost always did. But Hester did not speak first. And then Effie
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  knew that there was such a secret between them as there had never been before,
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  and she spoke first. I am so glad he has come, said
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  she. We did miss them all day yesterday for all dear Summerfield. By
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  this time Hester was sure she could speak carelessly, and she said, yes,
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  I am very glad he is here. But how in the world you
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  suppose it happens? And where is the other? How does it happen?
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  You goose? It happens that he knows who was on this boat, That
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  is how it happens. Breakfast ready, Miss grinned and spoke the waiter from
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  below. They hurried downstairs, and as Effie had expected but had not dared
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  to say, next their seats, they found a chair turned down by the
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  waiter, as if reserved for a passenger delayed, and doctor Summerfield's seat was
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  changed. He was sitting on the opposite side of the table. Effie made
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  the breakfast loiter as long as she could from the beginning. But she need
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  not have taken this trouble. Frederick Haydock's twilette was made and well made.
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  In five minutes he came and shook hands and sat down cheerily and freshly,
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  And you would never guess that he had been all night riding across northern Mississippi
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  in a planter's wagon, that he might strike the moon as he had done
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  this time. We did not expect you, mister Haydock, said Effie merrily.
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  Hester, Supfin wondered if she were blushing, why in the world need
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  Effie have said that nonsense upstairs? I am amazed at my own success,
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  said he frankly. The moment I found the boon was off with you on
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  board, I was determined that I would overhaul her somewhere good for you.
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  Would have been Effie's ejaculation, had she been used to slang, even in
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  its more gracious forms, and had she dared say what she thought. But
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  she and Hester both silently respected the courage of the man, and so a
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  jolly breakfast follows. Haydock was courtesy itself to doctor Summerfield. He made that
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  nice old man find out that in taking care of these ladies he had won
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  mister Frederick Haydock's abiding regard, if that were worth anything. Haydock told with
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  great humor the details of his adventures the day before, of how and when
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  he learned that the ladies were in Memphis, and then how he took the
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  afternoon train and pursued. He did not tell, nor did Hester get us
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  what eef he figured out from the guide book afterwards that his night ride across
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  those rough country roads was well nigh forty miles long. Then followed an ideal
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  mourning, O thou hunted and bated child of civilization. Think if thou canst
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  what it would be to spend one morning of life without a bore, without
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  a newspaper, without a mail, without a telegram, without a beggar,
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  and without a morning call. Nay, think more than this, Think what
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  it would be to have these evils wholly impossible to thee. Then imagine a
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  bland april morning of the latitude of Mississippi, a new flora passing like a
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  shifting panorama. Shade if you wish, shade sun if you wish sun,
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  Imagine books, pencils, paints, papers, ink, can a good piano,
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  and dear friends. And then say whether life has a right to ask
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  anything more than it finds on such a morning, on such a craft as
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  the Chester Boone, Doctor Summerfield asked Effie what was meant by tone in pictures.
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  Effie said that if he would come out on the Western Guard they called
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  it western, though it often looked north and south, she would show him
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  Ruskin's experiment which illustrates his definition. And so before doctor Summerfield knew it,
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  he and Effie were talking art, and he was watching her practice for three
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  hours there, and Frederick Haydock and Hester Supkin were walking up and down the
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  deck forward till she was tired. And then he had made for her a
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  seat where there was no wind and just a little warmth from the chimney,
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  and he was telling her first about old school life at Antioch. What a
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  noble, uns selfish creature Hiram Brinkerhoff was, what a loss it was to
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  him to lose Hiram, and how happy they had been together. He told
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  her of the war, how he had come down this very river with Sherman,
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  told of adventures almost in sight of where the boat ran. Why he
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  came nobody could tell how to telling of his experiences in New Orleans. Since
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  what is the life of a lonely youngster there where it touches other life,
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  and where it does not, how lonely it is, and what else it
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  is? And Frederick Haydock did not do all the talking. Hester Sutton told
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  him things which she might have put in the newspaper, but which in truth
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  she had never told to a human being. She told of her early life,
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  of her father's death, of Norton and the Wheaton Academy, and how
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  strange it seemed to her when she was hardly seventeen to be managing for herself
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  as a teacher of girls in the Southwest Milan Seminary. She fairly caught herself
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  asking him, as if he had been Effie Apgar herself, if he thought
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  she did wrong when she defied the secretary of the Trustees at Southwest Milan,
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  and Frederick Haydock had to bite his tongue out lest he should say, you
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  cannot do wrong. If you said it, it was right. But he
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  did not say that metaphorically. He did bite his tongue out, and then
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  with the new tongue which came in the place of that bitten one, he
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  said, I do not know what you call right. I know that I
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  should have been much pleased with myself if I had been half so civil.
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  And I am so glad you left the brutes, if you did leave them,
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  leave them, said hester. I left that horrid place before night,
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  and I hope I may never see it again. My dear mister Haydock.
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  I did not know. But what she did not no, and Haydock was
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  not told. Just at that moment, from the deck below, a clear
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  tenor voice sang, I sought my Lord in the wilderness, in the wilderness,
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  in the wilderness, I sought my Lord in the wilderness for I'm going
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  home, for I am going home, For i am going home. I'm
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  just getting ready for i Am going home the wild clear notes rang out so
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  as to startle them both. Hester ran forward to look over the rail,
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  and Haydock, without so much eagerness followed. Neither he nor she knew that
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  three hours had passed since breakfast. The voice went on, I found free
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  grace int the wilderness, in the wilderness, in the wilderness, I found
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  free grace in the wilderness, for I'm a going home, for I am
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  going home, for I'm going home. I'm just getting ready for I'm going
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  home. With a third verse, some twenty of the deckhands took up the
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  chorus, my father creatures in the wilderness, in the wilderness, in the
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  wilderness. And so the weird song went on, and mister Haydock's tete a
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  tete with Miss Suffin was for the moment ended end of chapter eight,