The Phantom of Bogue Holauba | Page 7

together on the cool, fern-embowered
veranda.
"Why, Mr. Gordon," she exclaimed in surprise, "you have no idea how
strange you look! You must have overworked awfully this afternoon.
Why, you look as if you had seen a ghost!"
To her amazement, he recoiled abruptly. Involuntarily, he passed his
hand over his face, as if seeking to obliterate the traces she had
deciphered. Then, with an obvious effort, he recovered a show of

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