CHAPTER XI
An hour later there was a more significant landfall than the fate ofthese finny trophies. Few of the river craft kept their dates of arrivalwith certainty, and this was especially the case with the generalpackets. Though the water was high, the operations of the Confederatesrendered the passage sometimes unsafe, sometimes impracticable. Now andagain the Federal authorities pressed a boat into government service fora time and released it to its owners and its old traffic when theemergency was past. Therefore on this dull night, when no sign or newswas received of the _Calypso_, overdue some ten hours, the wharf becamedeserted. Hardly a light showed on the river banks or along the spreadof the stream, save indistinct gleams in the misty gloom where thepicket boats kept up a ceaseless vigilant patrol. The gunboats, with avaguely saurian suggestion lay with their noses in the mud. Here andthere in allotted berths were the ordinary steamboats with theircuriously flimsy aspect, as if constructed of white cardboard, silent,disgorged, asleep. The rafts, the coal-barges, the humble skiffs, andflatboats were all tied up for the night. The town had lapsed tosilence and slumber as the hour waxed late. The great pale stream seemedas vacant as the great pale sky.
Suddenly far down the river two lights, close together, high in the air,red and green, shimmering through the mist, struck the attention of awanderer along the high bluffs near Judge Roscoe's house, even before ahoarse, remonstrant, outspreading sound, the clamor of the whistle threetimes repeated, hailing the landing, invaded the murky air. It was aspell to rouse all the precincts of the river bank. Lights flickeredhere and there. Hack drivers, who had given up the expectation of theboat's arrival at any hour that would admit of the transfer of thepassengers to the hotel, heard the sound from afar, harnessed theirteams in haste, and the carriages came rattling turbulently down thestony declivity to the wharf. Baggage vans, empty and curiously noisy,recklessly jolted along, careening ill-poised and light without theirwonted burdens. The omnibuses, with the glow of their dim little frontwindows to distinguish their approach, were soon on the scene; thedriver of one was vociferating with a hackman, because of the lack oflighted carriage lamps, which had caused a collision and the wrenchingaway of the door and the cover of the step of the "bus," swaying openfor want of a cautionary pull on the cord. Loud and turbulent did thiswrangle grow, and presently it was punctuated by blows. The crowd thatthe mere sound of a fight summons from invisibility was almost instantlyswaying about the scene and hindering the efforts of the police, whofound it necessary to interfere, and while both participants werearrested and hurried off to the station in the clutches of the law, theyleft their respective vehicles like white elephants in the hands of theremainder of the force, two of whom must needs mount the boxes torestrain the "cattle," as the hack driver mournfully called his beastsin commending them to police protection. The horses plunged and reared,terrified at the apparition of the _Calypso_, now manoeuvring and turningin the river, the paddles beating upon the water with a splashing impactas the side-wheels slowly revolved. The ripples were all aglow with thereflection of her red furnace fires, and her cabin lights sent longavenues of white evanescent radiance into the vague riparian glooms. Thejangle of the pilot bells and the sound of the exhaust pipes camealternately on the air. And presently the great white structure wasmotionless, towering up into the gray uncertainties of the night, theblack chimneys seeming to fairly touch the clouds, the lacelike guardsfilled with flitting figures all in wild commotion pressing toward thestairway.
Albeit the discharge of the freight would not take place till morning,the scene was one of great confusion. In accordance with the regulationwhich the military occupation of the country required, the passengersrendered up their passes on deck to the officer who had boarded thevessel for the purpose of receiving them, permitting the travellers todepart one by one through a guarded gate, but it was impossible toidentify them after they were once on the wharf. Hence there was naughtto distinguish from the other passengers a gentleman carrying aportmanteau, who entered an omnibus, save that the wharf lamps mighthave shown that he was handsome, taller than common, with a finepresence and gait, and clad in garments of unmistakably English cut andmake. The night clerk of the hotel evidently saw nothing else unusual inthe stranger as he stood under the gas-jet to register at the desk inthe office, almost deserted at this hour--not even in the momentaryhesitation when he had the pen in hand. He wrote "John Wray, Junior,Manchester, England," had a room assigned to him, and passed on to thelate supper, for which Uncle Ephraim's negligence had prepared him to doample justice.
Julius did not appear next morning at the usual breakfast hour. Theterrors of the Chinese gong, that was wont to rouse the laggards as ithowled about the hotel under the belaborings of a stalwart waiter,failed to stimulate his activity or break his slumber. The fatigues anddangers Julius had encountered had prostrated him. He was unconsciouslyrecuperating, gathering strength for the rebound. He did not wake,indeed, till near noon. He turned once or twice luxuriously in thecomfortably sheeted bed--at his home they had not dared to purloin linenfrom the household store to furnish his couch in the attic--and then,with his hands clasped under his head, he lay with a mind almost vacantof any conscious process, mechanically, quietly, taking in the detailsof the place. The sun sifted in at a crevice of the green shutters ofthe window that opened to the floor and gave upon a wide gallerywithout--now and again he heard at considerable intervals the passing ofa footstep on this gallery. He noticed the wind stir and the flicker ofthe shadow of foliage on the blinds. The room was in the second story,and he knew that there were trees in a space at the rear of theold-fashioned little hotel. The furniture was of a highly varnished,cleanly, straw-colored aspect, of some cheap wood that refreshingly madeno pretentions to be aught but what it was, for on the bureau drawers,the head and foot-boards of the bed, and on the rocking-chair waspainted a gay little bouquet of flowers in natural but intense tints. Afresh Chinese matting was on the floor, and muslin curtains hung frompoles supported on pins that had a great brass rosette or boss at theextremity. The building enclosed a quadrangle, bounded by the river atthe lower end. On each of the other three sides the wide galleries ofthe three-story brick edifice overlooked the grassy space. He hadlearned that the hotel had gone into the hands of a new proprietor, buteven were it otherwise he hardly feared recognition, although he hadbeen born and reared in the immediate vicinity. At his time of life afew years work great changes. The boy of nineteen was hardly to beidentified in the man of twenty-two, with his mustached lips, hisbroadened shoulders, his three inches of added height, and thecomposure, confidence, and capability conferred by those years ofactivity and emergency and responsibility working at high pressure. Someold resident might recognize the Roscoe eye, but he knew he could trustthe kindly associations of "auld lang syne" to avoid the sifting of acasual recollection. Besides, this was hardly likely to befall, for thetown was an ever shifting kaleidoscope of confused humanity. It was fullof strangers,--Federal officers, on service and unattached, on leave ofabsence, wounded, and their families; special correspondents; hospitalnurses; emissaries of the Sanitary Commission; enterprising promoters ofall manner of jobs, and the horde of nondescript non-combatants thathangs on the rear of every army, seeking the many methods of securing awindfall from the vast expenditures of money and goods necessary tomaintain a great force on a war footing. He was hardly likely to meetany one who had ever known him, or even his father, in his stay at thehotel, which he must contrive by some method to make as short aspracticable. Then suddenly a great dismay fell upon him. He lifted hishead and gasped as he looked about him for something that was gone! Histreacherous memory!--in the prostration of his mental faculties byexcitement and fatigue, in the lull of his long slumber, he hadforgotten the alias he had registered as his own name on his entrance tothe hotel. He thought of half a dozen of the most usual nomenclature,striving to goad his mind to a recognition of each in turn as the one hehad selected. He was in desperation. True, he might have an opportunityto study the r
egister and could recognize his own handwriting. Butsomething--anything might occur in the interval in which it might benecessary to give the name he had assumed, and any incongruity with theregistered alias would be fatal. Every casual step along the hall on oneside, or the gallery on the other, threw him into a sudden tremor as heprefigured a stoppage, a knock, an inquiry--"Are you Mr. AlfredJones?--here's a note for you. Messenger waits for an answer."
"And _I_ don't know whether to answer as Mr. Jones or not!" he said tohimself in a panic. He might turn away a note of warning from hisfather, who possibly had recognized his handwriting on the register, ofgreeting from Leonora in whose face he had seen an appalledcommiseration as he sped past her yesterday in his father's hall; or itmight be that some Confederate agent within the lines would hear of hisplight and contrive this way to communicate with him. No matter howcautiously worded, his was not a correspondence at this juncture todecline to receive, and to turn lightly over to the investigatingscrutiny of all the A. Joneses to whom it might be presented. On theother hand he might "throw all the fat in the fire," should he meddlewith the large correspondence of the Jones family by opening sealedmissives bearing their name, obviously not intended for him, if he hadregistered as Abner Smith.
Julius was about to spring up, throw on his clothes, and rush to theregister, when the name struck him with the force of conviction. _JohnWray_--That was it! _Manchester, England!_ The address had been selectedto take advantage of the typically English clothes. He meditated upon itas he sat upright in bed. He had added the "Junior," for the sake ofverisimilitude. He smiled with satisfaction to have regained it.Then--"I must have something to fix that in my memory," he said.
He looked fruitlessly about. He had no paper, save the map in the liningof his boot, no pencil, no pen and ink, naught for a memorandum. Thenwith his gay youthful inconsequence--"Constant repetition will settleit--Mr. John Wray--Mr. John Wray; Mr. John Wray. How do you do to-day?"
He threw himself back on his pillow, laughing at the unintentionalrhyme.
"I'm a poet--if I did but know it!"
His irrepressible youthful mirth found its account in the most untowardtrifles.
"There it is again!" he said to himself, "I have destroyed the sequenceof my ideas. I am just as likely now to say, 'I am Mr. Poet'--or perhapswith the notion that I have got to butt out of this somehow--'I am Mr.Goat!'"
He laughed again, yawned lazily, stretched his arms upward, and fellback luxuriously on the bed, resting his tired muscles.
He lay staring at the design of the wall-paper, which was in scrolls ofbrown that, as they whorled over clear enamelled spaces of creamy white,enclosed an outline in fainter browns and yellow,--a scene of wavesbreaking on rocks and surmounted by a lighthouse; a far and foreignsuggestion to this deeply inland nook, and refreshing, for there wasmore than vernal warmth in the air. And presently, still repeating--"Mr.John Wray, how do you do to-day?" he slipped off into a half-consciousdoze from which he was roused only by a knock at the door.