by John Brunner
Besides, suppose Eulalie started planting charms all over the boat…!
“Mas’ Lamenthe!” a voice shouted. He roused with a start. Here came one of the deckhands, grinning for the honor of being sent in search of someone who was such a credit to “the race”… at least according to the black press of Louisiana.
“What is it?”
“Sah, Mas’ Vanaday de inspector come here an’ de cap’n say he busy, will you talk to um?”
Fernand sighed. Well, it was only to be expected. Back when he first signed up with Drew, the steamboat inspectors had been constant visitors aboard the Atchafalaya, though their attentions had shifted elsewhere when it became obvious that she was being operated to the highest standards.
But the rumor of a race was bound to bring them running. Just so long as they were equally strict with the Nonpareil, all would be well.
Even so, it would be half an hour wasted.
“Tell him I’m on my way,” he said gruffly, and followed the hurrying deckhand at a calm pace imitative of his mentor’s.
“The lowdown sneaking son of a bitch!” Woodley raged, staring through his field glasses. “Drew’s unloading cargo that was put aboard this morning! He’s not making a regular commercial run!”
Given the news which had been brought a few minutes before, that was unsurprising. The officers standing around him held their peace, except for McNab, who said sourly, “Wasn’t that what you were hoping for, Captain—a chance to prove our boat is better? Well, here it is.”
“I don’t trust him!” Woodley rasped. “He’ll leave an hour ahead of schedule and claim it was at the same time as us!”
“We can make certain that doesn’t happen,” Hogan said, lowering his own glasses. Trumbull was still in the pilothouse, which afforded a better view than this spot on the boiler deck.
“He’ll leave when he damn’ well chooses!” Woodley insisted, having missed the point. “And if we leave at the same time, and Parbury isn’t here—Mr. Iliff! Send your boy to bring Captain Parbury. Give him money for a landau. Go on, do it now.”
“What about Gordon?” Iliff countered.
“The hell with him! If he’s not aboard for a record run, I for one won’t miss him… What in tarnation are they taking off that wagon?”
“Must be Dr. Cherouen’s machines,” Hogan suggested.
“Oh, yeah. I guess— What is it?”—rounding on an anxious deckhand who had arrived at a run.
“Captain!”—with a sketch for a salute. “Mr. Underwood says they’re trying to come on board!”
“Who are?”
“Uh—all kinds of people. Says he can’t stop ‘em all forever!”
With a sense of the world falling apart, Woodley strode to the rail and looked down. At least twenty people, including a few women, were laying siege to young Anthony, who had as usual been assigned the routine job of checking that those who tried to board had paid their fare. He glanced up, desperate for assistance, and a moment later Whitworth arrived with a couple of burly deckhands. Having spoken rapidly to Anthony, he shouted to the captain.
“Sir, you got to get a clerk down here! He can’t make ‘em believe we’re taking passengers for St. Louis only!”
Woodley took a deep breath. “Okay! Iliff, you relieve the boy, send him to Parbury like I said. McNab, get Bates to assign you a couple of tenders who know how to handle cash. Paying passengers are paying passengers, even if they are idiots who only want to say they’ve taken part in a race. Corkran, you and Roy raise steam at once! Is Steeples here? Williams?”
“Vic’s below,” the chief engineer answered. “But I don’t know about Eb. He should be here by now.”
A chill tremor went down Woodley’s spine. He concealed his reaction.
“Find him, damn it! And I mean at once!”
Having spent the morning on an entirely different story, which had worked out well, Joel had taken time for lunch before returning to the Intelligencer office. Confident the copy he was about to deliver would be publishable, he was feeling tolerably pleased with himself when he pushed open the door.
A blast met him, hotter than the wind outside, hot as a steamer’s furnace.
“Siskin! Where the hell have you been? And what the devil did you mean by giving me this last night?”
Choleric, fuming, shaking a copy of today’s paper like a club, here was Abner Graves breaking all his own rules and storming into the pressroom instead of insisting that Joel come to him.
Feebly Joel said, “What?”
“This arrant nonsense!” Graves jabbed his finger on the relevant column. “Where you took your oath there wouldn’t be a race between the Atchafalaya and the Nonpareil!”
A terrible leaden sensation gathered around Joel’s heart. “You mean something’s happened to alter the logical conclusion I—”
“Logical!” Graves bellowed. “If that’s what they teach as logic in the fancy school you went to, we can manage without it! The Atchafalaya is dumping cargo for Ohio ports, and the Nonpareil—as you damn’ well know—has been refusing goods for anywhere except St. Louis. If that doesn’t spell a race, I’m a Dutchman!”
Joel clenched his fists. He could see his job vanishing up the chimneys of the rival steamers like the fumes from a pine knot.
“Get over there at once!” Graves roared. “Get aboard the Nonpareil even if you have to take deck passage! I’m arranging by telegraph to have your dispatches picked up along the way, and if the Atchafalaya ever gets into the lead I want you to overtake her by train and report from her as well. And before you ask: no, you may not go home for your baggage! You shift your ass down to the wharf just as soon as you grab hold of this documentation I’ve prepared!”
Dismayed, Joel began, “But, Mr. Graves—”
And stopped dead. An idea had erupted in his mind that previously he would never have dared to voice. Timorously he put it into words.
“Mr. Graves!”
“Yes?”
“If you’re so angry about my getting it wrong last night, then why—?”
“Why the hell am I sending you in spite of it? Because you may have no more sense than a bedbug, but you write so well you had me believing the garbage you turned in. Me!”—in an aggrieved tone. Then, with a sudden resumption of his normal manner: “Come on, this way! Move!”
Joel tossed his draft for today’s piece on the handiest table and obeyed, his heart singing.
“I say! Arthur! Hugo! Hello!”
The high voice cut through the racket of the riverside. Arthur glanced around. He was ill-temperedly overseeing the discharge of Louisette’s baggage from the carriage that had brought them. She had insisted on four hatboxes and a trunk fit for an Atlantic voyage, not to mention two changes of costume for her maid Bertha. Arthur saw no reason for the latter to be along; he had left his own valet behind, since the Nonpareil boasted a comprehensive staff of cabin attendants.
And Stella had inflicted a scarcely less burdensome load on Hugo and their respective servants. If the steamer did not actually founder under the weight, Arthur reflected sourly, she might well be handicapped by it.
His eye fell on the man who had shouted: Auberon, of course. But he was late in reacting. Louisette had recognized him instantly and jumped down from the carriage. Nobody could have guessed she was pregnant; Bertha had had—so she declared—no trouble lacing her into her slenderest corset. It had been in Arthur’s mind to consult some doctor or midwife concerning the stage at which tight lacing might affect the child, but other things had interfered. As soon as this trip was over, however…
“And how are you, old fellow?” Auberon inquired, using his worst mock-British tones. At least he had refrained from asking in French, which was a mercy; most of the time he delighted in phrases borrowed from European languages, because they were tremendously impressive to girls whose families were never going to let them venture far afield for fear they might be “spoiled” before a desirable match was found.
Art
hur looked him over. His cravat was loose; his boots were scratched and dusty; his cheeks were flushed; his speech was slurred… When, Arthur asked silently, was he going to learn to hold his liquor like a gentleman—like himself? The more he learned about the family he had married into, the more he felt their son and heir would have been better educated had he been sent to sweat out five years on a hog farm.
But if his bets on the Nonpareil were lost, Arthur would have no one else to turn to for help in recouping his fortunes. Exactly why he had wagered so much, he could not recall, but he did remember where and with whom. It had been at the Limousin, and Barber had been boasting so about the steamer he held a share in…
At all events the figure was twenty thousand.
Accordingly he swallowed his pride and warmly shook Auberon’s hand, thanking him profusely for having notified Louisette about the race.
Auberon was in too boisterous a mood to respond. He took his sister by the arm and hurried her toward the boat, yelling orders over his shoulder at her maid. Stella followed, and with a sigh Arthur joined Hugo Spring in completing the transfer of their belongings.
Nervous, Anthony was received by Captain Parbury in a dark salon crowded with overstuffed furniture. Conscious of his instructions to return at once, he blurted out his news, afraid the old man might explode with rage.
On the contrary: he uttered a gusting sigh like one who has struggled long and hard and come to the end of his task.
He asked a single question: “Does Mr. Woodley still plan to leave at five?”
“I guess so, sir,” the boy answered. “Leastways he didn’t tell me no different.”
“Good!”
Parbury was seated in a high-backed leather chair. At his right, various necessaries reposed on a lacquered papier-mâché table, including a brass bell. By touch he found and rang it.
Scarcely a moment passed before a slim girl with huge dark eyes, dressed in a drab stuff gown, came to inquire what he wanted. Her voice was tremulous, and Anthony was relieved to find he was not the only person the old captain overawed.
“You’ve packed everything for my trip?” Parbury said.
“Yes, sir. It’s all ready.”
“Pack for yourself as well. This time I want you to come with me.”
There was an instant of total stillness. The hot oppressive air seemed to congeal.
Eventually the girl raised her head.
“I don’t want to be blown up,” she said flatly.
“Dorcas, my dear!” With perfect accuracy he caught her hand and drew her to him. He appeared to have forgotten there was someone else in the room. “Didn’t I tell you this morning? There’s no question of being blown up! But there’s going to be a race, one to set alongside the famous races of before the war, and the winning boat is going to be mine!”
On the last word his fingers clamped convulsively around hers.
“Dorcas—Dorcas my dear! You have conceived some affection for me, surely? For me who took you in when Dr. Malone says you could have died on the street? Tell me you have!”
His blind face, ludicrously crossed by the gaudy bandanna she had given him, turned beseechingly upward.
“Of course!” she cried, trying to tug her fingers free as his other hand groped around her skirt to press her to him. “Of course I owe you more than I can ever repay! But—”
“Then why won’t you come with me? I’d regret it to the end of my days if you weren’t with me at the supreme climax of my life! Have you not guessed that I love you?”
Anthony wished with all his heart he could be a thousand miles from this grotesque confrontation.
“But your wife!” Dorcas burst out. Parbury interrupted.
“Wife? You know what kind of a wife she’s been to me since I came back from the war—and she let my only son die while I was away!” The accusation came out raw and bleeding. “If there were any justice in the world… But there’s none. Take what you can and make the most of it: that’s the rule experience has taught me. But, Dorcas!”—his voice growing gentle—“there’s one thing that’s comforted me in my darkest moments. You gave me courage to continue until I found someone to make the steamer of my dreams a reality. Now she’s set to run out her keenest rival. Come with me! Lend me your eyes!”
Once more there was a pause. Then, unexpectedly, Dorcas said, “How much time do I have?”
Parbury tensed. “You’re coming? You are coming?”
She ignored the question, and continued, “But when you say pack, you forget I own nothing to pack anything in! I have little enough in all conscience—a few gowns, shoes, stockings, bodices… That and I guess soap, towel, a hairbrush and comb, the sort of things I pack for you, would fill a bag like your old carpetbag with the broken lock.”
“Take it!” Again he pressed her hand fervently. “I’m a blockhead not to have thought of that before!”
Released at last, she kissed him lightly on the forehead. Turning away, she gave Anthony an immense, exaggerated wink: a streetwalker’s wink, accompanied by a lascivious passage of her tongue across her lips.
He was so startled, he almost failed to react when she beckoned him to accompany her from the room. Outside, he tried to break away, mindful of his orders to go back to the boat, but she sternly checked him.
“Tell your driver to wait a little longer! How is the captain to get to the wharf as quickly as that landau can take us? And Mr. Woodley will not dare leave without him. I’ll be with you in a quarter of an hour.”
The door of her room creaked as she was tossing all her belongings into the shabby but still usable bag. From the passage Fibby whispered, “Dorcas honey, what yo’ doin’?”
“The captain wants me to go with him on this trip.”
Fibby gasped, crossing herself. “Honey chil’, how’m I gon’ tell Miz’ Parbury?”
“I’m going to tell her,” said Dorcas savagely. “I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. Just exactly at the moment when I get set to walk out the door on her husband’s arm, I’m going to tell her what he ordered me to do and how he bribed me to do it.”
She snapped the bag shut. Its faulty lock flew open again at once; she shrugged and made do by buckling the strap.
“Poor Fibby!” she said, claiming her cloak from a hook behind the door. “But I’m doing just what the captain told me. He said, ‘Take what you can and make the most of it.’ So I’m going to.”
Having twirled the cloak around her, black side out, she turned her back and retrieved from under the bed the purse in which she had stored her coin-by-coin savings… and one thing far more precious: the engagement ring Fernand had bought her after their night at the Limousin, which she wore only when she was away from the house, which Mrs. Parbury and even Fibby had never seen.
The fat black woman was making a valiant attempt to follow, but so far she was badly astray. She ventured, “Yo’ gwine be de new missus? Miz’ Adèle gwine to de hospital?”
“Oh, wouldn’t he like that—just?” Dorcas exclaimed, chuckling gleefully. “But I don’t want to live in a poky house like this any more.”
“You got a better job!” Fibby burst out, as the thought habits of slavery days finally broke down and she remembered that nowadays a servant could find a new employer without waiting to be sold.
“No, I—” Dorcas began, and was interrupted by a shout from the front of the house.
“Dorcas! Aren’t you ready yet?”
“Coming, sir!” And aside to Fibby: “Damn him, he’ll spoil my surprise for Miz’ Adèle if he yells like that! I don’t have a better job, Fibby dear. I got the gentleman Miz’ Adèle turned away, and he is a gentleman for all he came calling on a servant, and he’s going to be rich, and he’s going to win the race against Captain Damn-your-eyes Parbury! And when I’m living in a beautiful new house in the Garden District, I won’t forget you, I promise. I’ll send for you to come and work for me. And Captain and Mrs. Parbury may rot!”
“And another th
ing!” roared the bankrupt proprietor of the Grand Philharmonic Hall, who had called together everyone on his payroll so he could vent his rage on them in the empty auditorium.
Gaston could not stop himself trembling. He knew the rest were looking to him for guidance. He had been here longer than anyone except a few of the stagehands, and the conductor was after all a person of some consequence…
But all he could think of was that he was now sure to be out of a job along with the humblest emptier of cuspidors.
He had been struggling for weeks to find an alternative post, and failed. Gallingly, there was one new permanent orchestra in the city now: at the Limousin. It should be he, Gaston, who was directing it! But after the débâcle of Mardi Gras he had not dared go back…
What was he to be reduced to? Conducting the quadrille band aboard a steamboat, like that madman who had tried to get into a knife fight with Mr. Gordon? A man who could not read a note of music, yet leading his own band! It was cruel! What had he done to deserve this torment? Why had he ever come to this dreadful country?
“Mister Dow-raid!”
The call came from the foyer of the theatre. It was a light voice, a boy’s.
“Mister Dow-raid!”
Gaston had been in America long enough to hear his name mispronounced in every conceivable fashion. This was one of the commoner. He shouted, “In here—this way!” And walked briskly toward the exit. The theatre owner stood blinking, having lost the thread of his tirade.
The door swung wide just before Gaston reached it and a telegram boy marched in. He was well known here; sometimes he called two or three times in a week, bringing confirmation or cancelation of future engagements to the current batch of touring artistes. It was the first occasion, however, that he had brought anything for Gaston.
Hastily handing over a tip—which he could ill afford at this crisis in his life—Gaston seized the message. As he read it, a strange calm overcame him.