The Phantom of Bogue Holauba | Page 7

equanimity; he declared that it was only because he was so tousled in contrast with her fresh finery that she thought he looked supernaturally horrible! He would go upstairs forthwith and array himself anew.
Gordon proved himself a true prophet, for Rigdon came to dine. With the postprandial cigars, the two gentlemen, at Gordon's suggestion, repaired to the sitting-room to smoke, instead of joining their hostess on the veranda, where tobacco was never interdicted. Indeed, they did not come forth thence for nearly two hours, and were palpably embarrassed when Geraldine declared in bewilderment, gazing at them in the lamplight that fell from within, through one of the great windows, that now both looked as if they had seen a ghost!
Despite their efforts to sustain the interest of the conversation, they were obviously distrait, and had a proclivity to fall into sudden silences, and Mrs. Keene found them amazingly unresponsive and dull. Thus it was that she rose as if to retire for the night while the hour was still early. In fact, she intended to utilize the opportunity to have some dresses of the first mourning outfit tried on, for which the patient maid was now awaiting her.
"I leave you a charming substitute," she said in making her excuses. "Geraldine need not come in yet--it is not late."
Her withdrawal seemed to give a fresh impetus to some impulse with which Rigdon had been temporizing. He recurred to it at once. "You contemplate giving it to the public," he said to Gordon; "why not try its effect on a disinterested listener first, and judge from that?"
Gordon assented with an extreme gravity that surprised Geraldine; then Rigdon hesitated, evidently scarcely knowing how to begin. He looked vaguely at the moon riding high in the heavens above the long, broad expanse of the Mississippi and the darkling forests on either hand. Sometimes a shaft of light, a sudden luminous glister, betokened the motion of the currents gliding in the sheen. "Last night," he said in a tense, bated voice--"last night Mr. Gordon saw the phantom of Bogue Holauba, Stop! Hush!"--for the girl had sprung half screaming from her chair. "This is important." He laid his hand on her arm to detain her. "We want you to help us!"
"Help you! Why, you scare me to death!" She had paused, but stood trembling from head to foot.
"There is something explained in one of Mr. Keene's papers,--addressed to Mr. Gordon; and we have been much startled by the coincidence of his--his vision."
"Did he see--really----?" Geraldine had sunk back in her chair, her face ghastly pale.
"Of course it must be some illusion," said Rigdon. "The effect of the mist, perhaps----"
"Only, there was no mist," said Gordon.
"Perhaps a snag waving in the wind."
"Only, there was no wind."
"Perhaps a snag tossing in the motion of the water,--at all events, you can't say there was no water." Dr. Rigdon glanced at Gordon with a genial smile.
"Mighty little water for the Mississippi," Gordon sought to respond in the same key.
"You know the record of these apparitions." Leaning forward, one arm on his knee, the document in question in his hand, Rigdon looked up into Geraldine's pale face. "In the old days there used to be a sort of water-gypsy, with a queer little trading-boat that plied the region of the bends--a queer little old man, too--Polish, I think, foreign certainly--and the butt of all the wags alongshore, at the stores and the wood-yards, the cotton-sheds and the wharf-boats. By some accident, it was thought, the boat got away when he was befuddled with drink in a wood-chopper's cabin--a stout, trig little craft it was! When he found it was gone, he was wild, for although he saw it afloat at a considerable distance down the Mississippi, it suddenly disappeared near Bogue Holauba, cargo and all. No trace of its fate was ever discovered. He haunted these banks then--whatever he may have done since--screaming out his woes for his losses, and his rage and curses on the miscreants who had set the craft adrift--for he fully believed it was done in malice--beating his breast and tearing his hair. The Civil War came on presently, and the man was lost sight of in the national commotions. No one thought of him again till suddenly something--an apparition, an illusion, the semblance of a man--began to patrol the banks of Bogue Holauba, and beat its breast and tear its hair and bewail its woes in pantomime, and set the whole country-side aghast, for always disasters follow its return."
"And how do you account for that phase?" asked Gordon, obviously steadying his voice by an effort of the will.
"The apparition always shows up at low water,--the disasters are usually typhoid," replied the physician.
"Mr. Keene died from malaria,"
Geraldine murmured musingly.
The two men glanced significantly at each other. Then