she was coming down on the boat from cincinnati, the little convent girl. two sisters had brought her aboard. they gave her in charge of the captain, got her a state-room, saw that the new little trunk was put into it, hung the new little satchel up on the wall, showed her how to bolt the door at night, shook hands with her for good-by (good-bys have really no significance for sisters), and left her there. after a while the bells all rang, and the boat, in the awkward elephantine fashion of boats, got into midstream. the chambermaid found her sitting on the chair in the state-room where the sisters had left her, and showed her how to sit on a chair in the saloon. and there she sat until the captain came and hunted her up for supper. she could not do anything of herself; she had to be initiated into everything by some one else.
she was known on the boat only as "the little convent girl." her name, of course, was registered in the clerk's office, but on a steamboat no one thinks of consulting the clerk's ledger. it is always the little widow, the fat madam, the tall colonel, the parson, etc. the captain, who pronounced by the letter, always called her the little convent girl. she was the beau-ideal of the little convent girl. she never raised her eyes except when spoken to. of course she never spoke first, even to the chambermaid, and when she did speak it was in the wee, shy, furtive voice one might imagine a just-budding violet to have; and she walked with such soft, easy, carefully calculated steps that one naturally felt the penalties that must have secured them—penalties dictated by a black code of deportment.
she was dressed in deep mourning. her black straw hat was trimmed with stiff new crape, and her stiff new bombazine dress had crape collar and cuffs. she wore her hair in two long plaits fastened around her head tight and fast. her hair had a strong inclination to curl, but that had been taken out of it as austerely as the noise out of her footfalls. her hair was as black as her dress; her eyes, when one saw them, seemed blacker than either, on account of the bluishness of the white surrounding the pupil. her eyelashes were almost as thick as the black veil which the sisters had fastened around her hat with an extra pin the very last thing before leaving. she had a round little face, and a tiny pointed chin; her mouth was slightly protuberant from the teeth, over which she tried to keep her lips well shut, the effort giving them a pathetic little forced expression. her complexion was sallow, a pale sallow, the complexion of a brunette bleached in darkened rooms. the only color about her was a blue taffeta ribbon from which a large silver medal of the virgin hung over the place where a breast pin should have been. she was so little, so little, although she was eighteen, as the sisters told the captain; otherwise they would not have permitted her to travel all the way to new orleans alone.
unless the captain or the clerk remembered to fetch her out in front, she would sit all day in the cabin, in the same place, crocheting lace, her spool of thread and box of patterns in her lap, on the handkerchief spread to save her new dress. never leaning back—oh, no! always straight and stiff, as if the conventual back board were there within call. she would eat only convent fare at first, notwithstanding the importunities of the waiters, and the jocularities of the captain, and particularly of the clerk. every one knows the fund of humor possessed by a steamboat clerk, and what a field for display the table at meal-times affords. on friday she fasted rigidly, and she never began to eat, or finished, without a little latin movement of the lips and a sign of the cross. and always at six o'clock of the evening she remembered the angelus, although there was no church bell to remind her of it.
she was in mourning for her father, the sisters told the captain, and she was going to new orleans to her mother. she had not seen her mother since she was an infant, on account of some disagreement between the parents, in consequence of which the father had brought her to cincinnati, and placed her in the convent. there she had been for twelve years, only going to her father for vacations and holidays. so long as the father lived he would never let the child have any communication with her mother. now that he was dead all that was changed, and the first thing that the girl herself wanted to do was to go to her mother.
the mother superior had arranged it all with the mother of the girl, who was to come personally to the boat in new orleans, and receive her child from the captain, presenting a letter from the mother superior, a facsimile of which the sisters gave the captain.
it is a long voyage from cincinnati to new orleans, the rivers doing their best to make it interminable, embroidering themselves ad libitum all over the country. every five miles, and sometimes oftener, the boat would stop to put off or take on freight, if not both. the little convent girl, sitting in the cabin, had her terrible frights at first from the hideous noises attendant on these landings—the whistles, the ringings of the bells, the running to and fro, the shouting. every time she thought it was shipwreck, death, judgment, purgatory; and her sins! her sins! she would drop her crochet, and clutch her prayer-beads from her pocket, and relax the constraint over her lips, which would go to rattling off prayers with the velocity of a relaxed windlass. that was at first, before the captain took to fetching her out in front to see the boat make a landing. then she got to liking it so much that she would stay all day just where the captain put her, going inside only for her meals. she forgot herself at times so much that she would draw her chair a little closer to the railing, and put up her veil, actually, to see better. no one ever usurped her place, quite in front, or intruded upon her either with word or look; for every one learned to know her shyness, and began to feel a personal interest in her, and all wanted the little convent girl to see everything that she possibly could.
and it was worth seeing—the balancing and chasséeing and waltzing of the cumbersome old boat to make a landing. it seemed to be always attended with the difficulty and the improbability of a new enterprise; and the relief when it did sidle up anywhere within rope's-throw of the spot aimed at! and the roustabout throwing the rope from the perilous end of the dangling gang-plank! and the dangling roustabouts hanging like drops of water from it—dropping sometimes twenty feet to the land, and not infrequently into the river itself. and then what a rolling of barrels, and shouldering of sacks, and singing of jim crow songs, and pacing of jim crow steps; and black skins glistening through torn shirts, and white teeth gleaming through red lips, and laughing, and talking and—bewildering! entrancing! surely the little convent girl in her convent walls never dreamed of so much unpunished noise and movement in the world!
the first time she heard the mate—it must have been like the first time woman ever heard man—curse and swear, she turned pale, and ran quickly, quickly into the saloon, and—came out again? no, indeed! not with all the soul she had to save, and all the other sins on her conscience. she shook her head resolutely, and was not seen in her chair on deck again until the captain not only reassured her, but guaranteed his reassurance. and after that, whenever the boat was about to make a landing, the mate would first glance up to the guards, and if the little convent girl was sitting there he would change his invective to sarcasm, and politely request the colored gentlemen not to hurry themselves—on no account whatever; to take their time about shoving out the plank; to send the rope ashore by post-office—write him when it got there; begging them not to strain their backs; calling them mister, colonel, major, general, prince, and your royal highness, which was vastly amusing. at night, however, or when the little convent girl was not there, language flowed in its natural curve, the mate swearing like a pagan to make up for lost time.
the captain forgot himself one day: it was when the boat ran aground in the most unexpected manner and place, and he went to work to express his opinion, as only steamboat captains can, of the pilot, mate, engineer, crew, boat, river, country, and the world in general, ringing the bell, first to back, then to head, shouting himself hoarser than his own whistle—when he chanced to see the little black figure hurrying through the chaos on the deck; and the captain stuck as fast aground in midstream as the boat had done.
in the evening the little convent girl would be taken on the upper deck, and going up the steep stairs there was such confusion, to keep the black skirts well over the stiff white petticoats; and, coming down, such blushing when suspicion would cross the unprepared face that a rim of white stocking might be visible; and the thin feet, laced so tightly in the glossy new leather boots, would cling to each successive step as if they could never, never make another venture; and then one boot would (there is but that word) hesitate out, and feel and feel around, and have such a pause of helpless agony as if indeed the next step must have been wilfully removed, or was nowhere to be found on the wide, wide earth.
it was a miracle that the pilot ever got her up into the pilot-house; but pilots have a lonely time, and do not hesitate even at miracles when there is a chance for company. he would place a box for her to climb to the tall bench behind the wheel, and he would arrange the cushions, and open a window here to let in air, and shut one there to cut off a draft, as if there could be no tenderer consideration in life for him than her comfort. and he would talk of the river to her, explain the chart, pointing out eddies, whirlpools, shoals, depths, new beds, old beds, cut-offs, caving banks, and making banks, as exquisitely and respectfully as if she had been the river commission.
it was his opinion that there was as great a river as the mississippi flowing directly under it—an underself of a river, as much a counterpart of the other as the second story of a house is of the first; in fact, he said they were navigating through the upper story. whirlpools were holes in the floor of the upper river, so to speak; eddies were rifts and cracks. and deep under the earth, hurrying toward the subterranean stream, were other streams, small and great, but all deep, hurrying to and from that great mother-stream underneath, just as the small and great overground streams hurry to and from their mother mississippi. it was almost more than the little convent girl could take in: at least such was the expression of her eyes; for they opened as all eyes have to open at pilot stories. and he knew as much of astronomy as he did of hydrology, could call the stars by name, and define the shapes of the constellations; and she, who had studied astronomy at the convent, was charmed to find that what she had learned was all true. it was in the pilot-house, one night, that she forgot herself for the first time in her life, and stayed up until after nine o'clock. although she appeared almost intoxicated at the wild pleasure, she was immediately overwhelmed at the wickedness of it, and observed much more rigidity of conduct thereafter. the engineer, the boiler-men, the firemen, the stokers, they all knew when the little convent girl was up in the pilot-house: the speaking-tube became so mild and gentle.
with all the delays of river and boat, however, there is an end to the journey from cincinnati to new orleans. the latter city, which at one time to the impatient seemed at the terminus of the never, began, all of a sudden, one day to make its nearingness felt; and from that period every other interest paled before the interest in the immanence of arrival into port, and the whole boat was seized with a panic of preparation, the little convent girl with the others. although so immaculate was she in person and effects that she might have been struck with a landing, as some good people might be struck with death, at any moment without fear of results, her trunk was packed and repacked, her satchel arranged and rearranged, and, the last day, her hair was brushed and plaited and smoothed over and over again until the very last glimmer of a curl disappeared. her dress was whisked, as if for microscopic inspection; her face was washed; and her finger-nails were scrubbed with the hard convent nail-brush, until the disciplined little tips ached with a pristine soreness. and still there were hours to wait, and still the boat added up delays. but she arrived at last, after all, with not more than the usual and expected difference between the actual and the advertised time of arrival.
there was extra blowing and extra ringing, shouting, commanding, rushing up the gangway and rushing down the gangway. the clerks, sitting behind tables on the first deck, were plied, in the twinkling of an eye, with estimates, receipts, charges, countercharges, claims, reclaims, demands, questions, accusations, threats, all at topmost voices. none but steamboat clerks could have stood it. and there were throngs composed of individuals every one of whom wanted to see the captain first and at once: and those who could not get to him shouted over the heads of the others; and as usual he lost his temper and politeness, and began to do what he termed "hustle."
"captain! captain!" a voice called him to where a hand plucked his sleeve, and a letter was thrust toward him. "the cross, and the name of the convent." he recognized the envelop of the mother superior. he read the duplicate of the letter given by the sisters. he looked at the woman—the mother—casually, then again and again.
the little convent girl saw him coming, leading some one toward her. she rose. the captain took her hand first, before the other greeting, "good-by, my dear," he said. he tried to add something else, but seemed undetermined what. "be a good little girl—" it was evidently all he could think of. nodding to the woman behind him, he turned on his heel, and left.
one of the deck-hands was sent to fetch her trunk. he walked out behind them, through the cabin, and the crowd on deck, down the stairs, and out over the gangway. the little convent girl and her mother went with hands tightly clasped. she did not turn her eyes to the right or left, or once (what all passengers do) look backward at the boat which, however slowly, had carried her surely over dangers that she wot not of. all looked at her as she passed. all wanted to say good-by to the little convent girl, to see the mother who had been deprived of her so long. some expressed surprise in a whistle; some in other ways. all exclaimed audibly, or to themselves, "colored!"
it takes about a month to make the round trip from new orleans to cincinnati and back, counting five days' stoppage in new orleans. it was a month to a day when the steamboat came puffing and blowing up to the wharf again, like a stout dowager after too long a walk; and the same scene of confusion was enacted, as it had been enacted twelve times a year, at almost the same wharf for twenty years; and the same calm, a death calmness by contrast, followed as usual the next morning.
the decks were quiet and clean; one cargo had just been delivered, part of another stood ready on the levee to be shipped. the captain was there waiting for his business to begin, the clerk was in his office getting his books ready, the voice of the mate could be heard below, mustering the old crew out and a new crew in; for if steamboat crews have a single principle,—and there are those who deny them any,—it is never to ship twice in succession on the same boat. it was too early yet for any but roustabouts, marketers, and church-goers; so early that even the river was still partly mist-covered; only in places could the swift, dark current be seen rolling swiftly along.
"captain!" a hand plucked at his elbow, as if not confident that the mere calling would secure attention. the captain turned. the mother of the little convent girl stood there, and she held the little convent girl by the hand. "i have brought her to see you," the woman said. "you were so kind—and she is so quiet, so still, all the time, i thought it would do her a pleasure."
she spoke with an accent, and with embarrassment; otherwise one would have said that she was bold and assured enough.
"she don't go nowhere, she don't do nothing but make her crochet and her prayers, so i thought i would bring her for a little visit of 'how d' ye do' to you."
there was, perhaps, some inflection in the woman's voice that might have made known, or at least awakened, the suspicion of some latent hope or intention, had the captain's ear been fine enough to detect it. there might have been something in the little convent girl's face, had his eye been more sensitive—trifle paler, maybe, the lips a little tighter drawn, the blue ribbon a shade faded. he may have noticed that, but— and the visit of "how d' ye do" came to an end.
they walked down the stairway, the woman in front, the little convent girl—her hand released to shake hands with the captain—following, across the bared deck, out to the gangway, over to the middle of it. no one was looking, no one saw more than a flutter of white petticoats, a show of white stockings, as the little convent girl went under the water.
the roustabout dived, as the roustabouts always do, after the drowning, even at the risk of their good-for-nothing lives. the mate himself jumped overboard; but she had gone down in a whirlpool. perhaps, as the pilot had told her whirlpools always did, it may have carried her through to the underground river, to that vast, hidden, dark mississippi that flows beneath the one we see; for her body was never found.
