The Lady and the Pirate by Emerson Hough (best new books to read txt) 📕

right—ought to have done it back there before we started in.”

“How long will it take, Williams?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t know, sir. More than this afternoon, sure.”

“That’s too bad,” said I, with a fair imitation of regret. “We had expected to make Manning Island by night.”

“Yes, it is too bad, but it’s better to stop than ruin her, isn’t it, sir?”

“Certainly it is, and I quite approve your judgment. But I presume we can go a little way yet, until we find a good berth somewhere? There’s a deep channel comes in from the left, just ahead, and I think if we move on half a mile or so, we can get water enough to float even at low tide, and at the same time be out of sight of any boats passing in the lower part of the bay.”

“Oh, yes, sir, we can get that far,” said the engineer. Peterson was full of gloom, and though he thought nothing less than that we were going to be kept here a month, as one more event in a trip already unlucky enough, he gave the wheel to our Cajun pilot, and we crawled on around the head of a long point that came out into the bay. Here we could not see Manning Island, and were out of sight from most of the bay, so that, once more, the feeling of remoteness, aloofness, came upon me.

Not that it did me any present good. I despatched L’Olonnois as messenger to the ladies, telling them the cause of our delay, and explaining how difficult it was to say just when we would get in to the island; and then I betook myself to gloomy pacing up and down what restricted part of the deck I felt free for my own use. I wearied of it soon, and went to my cabin, trying to read.

At first I undertook one of the modern novels which had been recommended by my bookseller, but I found myself unable to get on with it, and standing before my shelves took down one volume after another of philosophers who once were wont to comfort me—men with brains, thinking men who had done something in the world beside buying yachts and country houses. My eye caught a page which earlier I had turned down, and I read again:

“Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the Divine Providence has found for you—the society of friends, the connexion of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age.... And we now are men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not pinched in a corner nor cowards fleeing before a revolution, but redeemers, and benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble clay, under the Almighty effort let us advance on Chaos and the Dark.”

I read the mystic, involved, subjective words again, as most of the Concord Sage’s words require, and reflected how well they jumped with the note of my heathen Epictetus, who had said, “Be natural and noble”. And, so thinking, I began to wonder whether, after all, my father, whose ruthless ways I betimes had explored, whose ruthless sins I had betimes atoned, had not been, perhaps, a better man than sometimes I had credited him with being. He, in accordance with his lights, had accepted the part given him by the Poet of the Play. He had confided himself childlike to the genius of his age, roaring, fighting, scrambling, getting and sometimes giving. He had trusted himself; and in the end, a bold man, he had advanced bravely on Chaos and the Dark. After a life of war and sometimes of rapine, done under the genius of his day, he had struck boldly the last chord on an iron string. Dear old Governor! I did not regret the million of his money I had spent to restore his memory clean in my own mind: for after all, it had all been in open war—that time when he unloaded a worthless mine on his friend, Dan Emory—Helena’s father, Daniel Emory, who was, at first, said to have left his family penniless; until a shrewd lawyer in some miraculous way had managed to sell at a good price a box full of worthless mining stock to some innocent victim.

Helena Emory never knew of that sale, nor did her guardian aunt. I did know of it, for the very good reason that I was both the shrewd lawyer and the innocent purchaser. It was the last act of my professional career; and it was this which caused the general report that I had made a bad mining venture, had lost my father’s fortune, and retired from my career a ruined man. A few friends knew otherwise: and I blessed the rumor which cost me certain friends who thought me poor and so forsook me. Perhaps, my father would have called me quixotic had he known. Now, as I read and pondered, I neither blamed him for his own course in fair business war with old Dan Emory, nor did I censure myself for my own hidden act of restitution. Let the world wag its head if it liked, and remain ignorant of other millions given to me before my father’s death, unprobated, secret, after the fashion of my pirate parent who buried his treasures and told none but his kin how they might be found.

Of course, in time, it all might come out. In time, Helena would know that this yacht which she supposed to be Davidson’s was my own, that the farm I was supposed to have rented really was a handsome estate that I owned, that many covert deeds in finance had been my own—it was only my silence and my absence in many parts of the world which had prevented her, also much a traveler, from knowing the truth about me long ago. And the truth was, I was not a poor man, but a rich one.

Yet he who had stolen my purse would indeed have stolen trash this day. Rich in one way, I was poor, indeed, in others. I cared nothing for old Dan Emory’s money, but very, very much for old Dan Emory’s daughter; and her I might not have, even after all my efforts.... No, the waters would leave no trail; and once more, after I had restored old Dan Emory’s daughter to her home and friends, I would travel the wide world again, and the gossipers might guess what causes had ended a professional career, apparently ended a great fortune, and actually had ended a life.... For, I thought—using some philosophy of my own making—it is not wealth, but usefulness, contentment and independence which a man should hold as his most desired success. These achieved, little is left to gain. Any one of these last, and nothing remains worth gaining.

I took up another book, at another marked page: “Let us learn to be content with what we have. Let us get rid of our false estimates, set up all the higher ideals—a quiet home, vines of our own planting; a few books full of the inspiration of genius; a few friends worthy of being loved; a hundred innocent pleasures that bring no pain or remorse; a devotion to the right that will never swerve; a simple religion empty of all bigotry, full of trust and hope and love—and to such a philosophy, this world will give up all the empty joy it has.”

I meditated over this also, applying these tests to my own life.... Ah! now I saw why my foot was ever restless, why I sought always new scenes.... Where was my quiet home, the vines of my own planting? Would I flee from that to every corner of the world? Not if it held the woman of my choice. Would she thus roam restless, if she held the heart of her chosen and if they had a home?... I began to see the Plan unfold. Yes, and saw myself outside the Plan.... Because of a devotion to the right that would not swerve. Because of a fanaticism, an “oddness”, a nonconformity—ah! so I said bitterly to myself, because, after all, I was unattuned to my age, because I was unfit to survive before a man’s own judge.... It is Portia judges this world. The case of every man comes before a woman for decision. I, who rarely had lost a case at law where I could use my own trained mind, had lost my first and only case at the bar of Love....

So—and I sighed as I shut the books and returned them to their shelves—contentment never could be mine, nor that quiet home where only life is lived that is worth living; nor usefulness; nor independence.

I did not hear Jimmy when he came in, and when he spoke I jumped, startled.

CHAPTER XXXVIII IN WHICH IS AN ARMISTICE WITH FATE

“BLACK BART!” said Jimmy. “Say, now——”

“Well, good mate,” said I, and laid a hand on his curly fair head, “what shall I say?”

“Say nothin’,” he remarked, dropping his voice. “Listen!”

“Yes?”

“We have held a council.”

“Who has?”

“Why, me and Jean Lafitte and the heartless jade. I told her you sent us to her to bid her seek your presence.”

“Jimmy! What on earth do you mean! That’s precisely the last thing I would have done—I haven’t done it. On the contrary——”

“I told her,” he resumed calmly, “that when Black Bart, the pirut, spoke, he spoke to be obeyed. She said, ‘I can’t go,’ and I said, ‘You gotta go.’”

“You, yourself, may now go and tell her that there has been a very bad mistake, Jimmy; and that she need not come.”

“An’ make her cry worse? I ain’t goin’ to do it!”

“Sir! This is mutiny!—But did she cry, Jimmy?”

“Yes. Awful. She said she was homesick. She ain’t. I don’t know what really is the matter. I ast Jean Lafitte, an’ he said maybe you’d know. We thought maybe it was something about yon varlet. Do you know?”

“No, I do not, Jimmy.” I found myself engaged in one of those detestable conversations where one knows the talk ought to end, yet dislikes to end it.

Jimmy stood for some time, much perturbed, looking every way but at me, and at last he blurted out.

“Don’t you just jolly well awfully love the fair captive, yon heartless jade—my Auntie Helen? Don’t you, Black Bart?”

I made no answer, but frowned very much at his presumption.

“—Because, everybody else does. She’s nice. I should think you would. I do, I know mighty well.”

“She is—she is—she’s a very estimable young woman, Jimmy,” said I, coloring. “I think I may say that without compromising myself.”

“Then why do you hurt her feelings the way you do—when she’s plumb gone on you, the way she is?”

I sprang toward him to clap a hand over his garrulous mouth, but he evaded me, and spoke from behind the bathroom door. “Well, she is! Don’t I hear her sticking up for you all the time—didn’t I hear her an’ Auntie Lucinda havin’ a reg’lar row over it again, ‘I don’t care if he hasn’t got a cent!’ says she.”

“But yon varlet is rich,” said I.

“She didn’t mean yon varlet—she meant you, I’m pretty sure, Black Bart. An’ she’s been feedin’ Partial all the afternoon—say, he’s the shape of a sausage.”

“She is heartless, Jimmy! Little do you know the ways of a heartless jade—she wants to win away from me the last thing on earth I have—even my dog. That’s all. Now, Jimmy, you must go.”

But he emerged only in part from his shelter. “So Jean Lafitte an’ me, we looked it