Roxy

Home

57. The Steamboat Explosion



Roxy, as she rapidly recovered, found herself the principal topic of discussion in the town. It was clearly wrong, in the opinion of some of the strictest people, for her to return to her husband. It was contrary to Scripture, or what is of more consequence than Scripture, to wit, ingenious inferences from Scripture. Logical inferences are like precious stones, valuable in proportion to the distance from which they are fetched and the difficulty one has in getting at them. The great strainers agreed also with the camel-swallowers that it was a violation of law for Roxy to buy off Nancy's prosecution as she must have done. It was compounding a felony and protecting a man that deserved to go to penitentiaiy.

And then there were those of a Rosa Matilda turn of mind who talked loudly about the sacredness of the romantic sentiments that had somehow been outraged in Roxy's forgiveness. And there were a few who approved in a cynical fashion. Roxy was no fool. A whole loaf was better than a half, and when she came to think of it she must have seen that it was better to go back. But the greater number of people have a romantic love for heroism, all the more that they are quite incapable of emulating it. Those who heartily admired her course soon had things all (heir own way.

But one day, as the Fourth of July drew on and the air was made lively by fire-crackers, the whole town was thrown into consternation and excitement by the intelligence that Roxy had taken a step more startling than her return to her husband. Indeed nothing so awful had ever been heard. Some people thought Roxy's actions a disgrace to the Christian religion, an outrage on civilization, and what was worse, a shock to good society. For people whose minds act but slowly and in grooves, there is small distinction between an action that is " out of the common run " and an act that is essentially immoral. They only knew that Roxy had surprised them, this time beyond endurance.

She had gone to Kirtley's cabin and taken Nancy's child.

Mrs. Tartrum issued extras on the subject every hour giving all the details down to the date of going to press. She even interviewed Roxy. She had actually seen the baby with her own eyes !

Among the items in Mrs. Tartrnm's budget was the announcement that Mrs. Amanda Barlow was dreadfully afflicted. She was mortified beyond all expression. She had a right to be, poor thing ! To have the family disgraced right under her nose and eyes in that way was too much for a Christian woman to stand. And even Janet had left Roxy. She loved Roxy, but a sensitive young girl reared in boarding school, could she live in a house with such a child without contamination ? True she had read, with the approval of her teacher, " The Vicar of Wakefield," and Walter Scott's novels, and surreptitiously, she had read some older novels than Scott's ; but to read of such things in novels is quite another thing to enduring them in one's own family. Even Roxy's new hired girl, not to be behind Janet in delicacy, sought another place ; but the loyal Jemima notified Mrs. Rachel that she was going to live with Roxy. Jemima had an innate spirit of opposition to Bhams, and this popular spasm of virtue aroused all the rude chivalry of her nature. Slue 'lowed they was only one rale downright Christian in creation and that was Roxy. Ez fer the Pharisees an' the Phylacterees thai didn't like a poor innercent little creetur that hadn't done no harm itself, it was her opinion if the gates of New Jerusalem ever opened fer sich folks the hinges would squeak and screech awfully. Roxy had married fer better an' fer wuss and when wuss come thicker and faster and more of it, she took the wuss and done what she could with it.

About this time, however, the town was diverted from its discussion of the merits of Roxy's action and from speculation about the chance of Mark's returning, by the awful intelligence of a steamboat explosion, but a few miles away. The " Red Rock," an opposition packet-boat, trying to keep ahead of the " Lady Pike " of the regular line, had put on a full head of steam and in making a landing on the Kentucky side had been blown in-shore by the wind. The engineer was quite unwilling to allow any of the steam to escape; it had been made by a prodigious expenditure of tar and soap-fat and other inflammables thrown into the furnaces. In vain the pilot tried to back out, the wind drove the stern of the boat ashore, in vain he tried to run ahead, the steamer had as yet no steerage way and the bow lay flat against the sandy bottom. At last poles and spars were resorted to, the steam still carefully hoarded. The passengers stood on the guard, a young Baptist minister, who with his bride had just come aboard, stood half-way up the stairs waving his handkerchief to the friends on shore, when in an instant the boat flew into a thousand pieces. People were hurled into the air, dropped into the water, on the bank, everywhere. They were scalded, drowned, destioyed, torn to atoms. It was told that a piece of the boiler crossed the river, and cut down a black locust-tree, six inches in diameter. The first clerk went into the air, fell feet foremost into deep water, and swam ashore. The bar-keeper alighted on the inverted roof of his bar, away in the stream, and was saved. The young Baptist minister and his wife were never found. A mile away from the place of explosion, in a tree-top, there was found a coat-collar, which his friends thought belonged to him.

As all this happened but four miles below the town, Luzerne was thrown into a state of agitation such as only a village can know. Many in the village had friends and acquaintances on the boat. The passengers least hurt were brought to Luzerne to be cared for. The firemen, standing near the boilers, were all killed, and but one of the roustabouts was saved. This roustabout, Bob Olcott, was laid, bruised and maimed, in the village hotel. In a few days he was able to sit in the bar-room and regale the stock company of loafers with a full account of what he saw, and heard, and felt of the explosion, though in fact he knew nothing about it until he found himself lying, bruised and stunned, in the sand of the shore, some minutes after the boilers had burst. But as the story grew in wonderf ulness, many resorted to the bar-room to talk with "the feller that had been blowed up." And as nearly every stranger who came felt bound to " stand treat " after the story was ended, the roustabout did not take especial pains to keep it strictly limited to actual observations of his own. In truth, Bob Olcott embroidered the account of the explosion of the "Red Rock " off Craig's Bar with various incidents, real and imaginary, taken from other explosions in the great river system of the West, which traditional stories he had picked up from his feiioicroustabouts when they lay resting on coils of rope, and piles of barrels, and sacks of coffee, whiling away the time between landings and wood-yards with pleasant accounts of assassinations.

Bob did not lie from any purpose ; it was no more than an act of good-fellowship and kindness for him to satisfy the craving of his audience. They would have gone away disappointed if Olcott had told them that when the explosion took place, he was sitting with his feet dangling over the guard, just in front of the cook-house, and that he did not know anything more until he came to himself in the sand-pile, full of aches and bruises. No good-hearted fellow could stick to the barren truth under such circumstances. The temptation appealed to Bob's better nature and he kept on remembering things. Far be it from me to reprehend so generous a trait ! Bob Olcott belonged to my own profession. He was a novelist, in his way, and his tales had a great run. Mother Tartrum interviewed him every day, she was the News Company, and she handed over his stories in job lots to the small dealers, who retailed them on every street corner and over all partition fences. There were skeptics who sat on salt-barrels and store-boxes in the shade of brick walls, and shook their heads over these stories. Thev knew better : the thing didn't hang together. But I shall not take their side of the question. These are the critics. They were to Bob Olcott what the young fellows who write book notices are to the rest of us. Down with the people who pick a story to pieces as a botanist does a lily I Long live those sympathetic readers who enjoy a tale in simplicity. Did not Washington Irving declare that he never doubted anything that he found pleasant to believe?

One day Olcott, whose story increased in length, and breadth, and thickness, as he regained his physical strength, noticed that, as the steamboat explosion acquired staleness by the lapse of a week of time and by incessant repetition and discussion, there was an older topic that came back to the surface of bar-room and street corner talk. Mixed with exciting discussions of the relative merits of Henry Clay and James K. Polk, he heard mention of Mark Bonamy's affair, and of the curious action of his wife in forgiving her husband and adopting his child. He heard with curiosity, but with something of the jealousy a novelist is supposed to feel when his rival's book is in everybody's hand, the conjectures about Bonamy'a return, the story of his flight, the guess that he was at work on the deck of a steamboat.

" What kind of a 'pearin' feller was this yer Bonnermy ? " he asked, one day.

Mark was described.

" He wont never come back," said Bob, with a melancholy air and an oracular mysteriousness.

" Why ? "

" He was on the ' Red Hock ' when she busted, that very feller. Told me all about things that very day. Com in' home to look about, he said. Tuck deck passage to keep from bein' seed by old friends."

This story, told over and over and commented on by different hearers, became more and more particular and circumstantial. The description of Mark grew more explicit and unmistakable.

The story came to Lathers's ears, and, with his innate love of mischief, he went to Barlow. There was property at stake, and Bai'.ow was not insensible to property. Mark had no will, and neither Roxy nor her adopted child could inherit of the estate, beyond what was Roxy's " dower right." The matter was quite worth looking into.

Roxy, on her part, was alarmed by the story as she heard it. She went to see Bob, and the poor fellow, who was a kind-hearted liar, admitted to her various doubts that ho had, as to whether the man " moughtn't be somebody else." Whittaker went to see the man, and cross-questioned him until the imaginative fellow was somewhat disconcerted " in what he called his mind," and made several amendments and adjustments in his story. But, notwithstanding Whittaker's unbelief and Roxy's own skepticism, she was in greater and greater uneasiness about Mark, as the time went on and she had no further intelligence.

Lathers had many private talks with Olcott, and now the sheriff's instruction he became more guarded, and his story became perceptibly less inconsistent with itself. Lathers paid his board for a week in order to retain him in the village, and Olcott thought it about the easiest run he had ever had in his life.

One evening Major Lathers had a long interview with the roustabout. Then, as he drank with Olcott at the bar, he said to the landlord : " Barlow'll apply fer letters of administration on that, and the jedge'll grant 'em, too."

" I don't hardly think so," said Peter Raymond, who had just come in. Raymond was an eccentric fellow, French by his father's side and Kentuckian on his mother's. He was thought to be a simpleton by strangers, but those who knew him better considered him more of a wit.

" Why wont he ? " responded Lathers, with a knowing twinkle in his eyes.

"Well, your evidence is mighty slim, it 'pears like, and then Mrs. Bonamy's got the beet lawyer in the country ou her side," answered Pete.

"We know what the evidence is better' n yea do, and ez fer lawyer, I'd like to see you muster a better than Bar low."

" Well, she's done it. He come up on the mail-boat jest this minute, and has gone straight to her house."

" Joe Marshall of Madison, I suppose," said Lathers, with a look of despondency. " He's an all-fired speaker, but he's lazy, and he wont work up the case like Barlow."

" 'Taint Joe Marshall, neither," said Pete. " It's a long sight better man than him."

" Who in thunder is it ? "

" Oh, it's Mark Bonamy himself ! He was dressed rough, like a deck-hand, and in the dusk didn't nobody on. the w'arf-boat see him. He jest jumped off away aft, and crossed the lower end of the w'arf. I happened to meet him as he was goin' up the bank, and I says: ' Go to thunder, Mark Bonamy !' says I. 'I'm that glad to see you ! ' An' he says, ' Hello, Pete ! Is that you ? How's my wife?' An' I says, 'All well, last I heerd,' says I. An' he never hardly stopped, but went catacornered acrost Slabtown, steerin' straight fer home, and walkin' a blue streak, like. Now I don't know what you think Major, but, in a case like this 'ere, in which he takes a interest, I'll put Bonamy ag'in all the Barlows you can git. Mrs. Bonamy's "

" Got high and low, Jack and the game," said the Major, striding out of the door into the fresh air, and saying, " Well ! that beats me?

Bob Olcott's easy run came to a sudden termination at the end of the week. No longer able to live as a novelist, he had to carry coffee-sacks and roll whisky-barrels once more. He h not the only man in the profession who has failed from c /erdoing things.