The Lady And The Pirate - The Lady and the Pirate Part 23
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The Lady and the Pirate Part 23

said she. "It is such fun. This dear old town, don't you know? Now, with a nice young man to go about with Aunt Lucinda and me----"

"How would a man like Calvin Davidson do?" I demanded bitterly.

"Very well. He is nice enough."

"I suppose so. He is rich, able to have his horses and cars--even his private yacht. He can order a dinner in any country in the world, or tell you the standing of any club, in either league, at any minute of the day or night. Could I say more for his education? He has two country places and a city house and a business which nets him a hundred thousand a year. How can he help being nice? I do not resemble Mr. Davidson in any particular, except that I am wearing one of his waistcoats. Also, Helena, I am wearing a suit of flannels which I have borrowed from John, his Chinese cook. You can readily see I am a poor man. How, then, can I be nice?"

"No one would see us here," said she, sublimely irrelevant, as usual.

"There are some little yellow flowers over there on the bank. Maybe I could find some violets."

There was a wistfulness in her gaze which made appeal. I could not resist. "Helena," said I suddenly, "give me your parole that you will not try to escape, and I will walk with you among yonder flowers. You look as though just from a Watteau fan, my dear. It is fall, but seems spring, and the world seems made for flowers and shepherds and love, my dear. Do you give me your word?"

"If I do, may I walk alone?"

"No, with me."

"I'll not try to take the train. On my honor, I will not."

I looked deep into her eyes and saw, as always, only truth there--her deep brown eyes, filled with some deep liquid light whose color I never could say--looked till my own senses swam. I could scarcely speak.

"I take your parole, Helena," I said. "You never lied to me or any other human being in the world."

"You don't know me," said she. "I used often to lie to mama, and frequently do yet to Aunt Lucinda. But not if I say I give my word--my real word."

"When will you give me your real word, Helena? You know what I mean--when will you say that you love me and no one else?"

"Never!" said she promptly. "I hate you very much. You have been presumptuous and overbearing."

"Why then should you promenade with me?"

"Fault of anything better, Sir!" But she took my hand lightly, smiling as I assisted her down the landing way.

"But tell me," she added as we made our way slowly up the muddy slope, "really, Harry, how long is this thing to last? When are we going back home?"

"How can you ask? And how can I reply, save in one way, after taking the advice of yonder pirate captain, your blue-eyed nephew? He says they always live happy ever after. Listen, Helena. Gaze upon this waistcoat! Forget its stripes, and imagine it to be sprigged silk of a day long gone by. Let us play that romance is not yet dead. These are not cuffs, but ruffles at my wrists--for all Cal Davidson's extraordinary taste in shirts. All the world lies before us, and it is yesterday once more. The Mediterranean, Helena, how blue it is--the Bermudas, how fine they are of a winter day! And yonder lies motley Egypt and her sands. Or Paris, Helena; or Vienna, the voluptuous, with her gay ways of life. Or Nagasaki, Helena--little brown folks running about, and all the world white in blossoms. All the world, Helena, with only you and I in it, and with not a care until, at least, we have eaten the last of our tinned goods of the ship's supplies; since I am poor. But if I could give you all that, would I be nice?"

"Would that suit you, Harry?" she asked soberly; "just gallivanting?"

"You know it would not. You know I want no vacation lasting all my life, nor does any real man. You know it was yourself that forced me out of my man's place and robbed me of my greatest right."

"Yes," said she, "a man's place is to fight and to work. It's the same to-day. But," she added, "you ran away; and you lost."

"But am I not trying to recoup my fortune, Helena? You see, I have already acquired a yacht, although but a few weeks ago I started in the world with scarcely more than my bare hands. Could Monte Cristo have done more?"

"It isn't money a woman wants in a man."

"What is it, then?"

"I don't know," said she. "Oh, come, we mustn't go to arguing these things all over again! I'm weary of it. And certainly Aunt Lucinda and I both are weary of our hat box yonder. That's what I asked you, how long?"

"As long as I like, Helena, you and your Aunt Lucinda shall dwell there. What would you say to three years or so?"

She seemed not to hear. "I believe I've found a four leaf clover,"

said she.

"Much good fortune may it bring you."

"Let me try my fortune," said she, and began plucking off the leaves.

"He loves me, he loves me not; he loves me, he loves me not."

"There!" she said, holding up the naked stem triumphantly; "I knew it."

"It would be a fairer test, had you a daisy, Helena," said I, "or something with more leaves; not that I know whose has been this ordeal. Suppose it were myself, and that you tried this one." I handed her a trefoil, but she waved it aside.

"I will try to find you a four leaf clover for your own, after a while," said she, and bobbed me a very pretty courtesy. Angered, I caught at the stick I was carrying with so sudden a grip that I broke it in two.

"I did not know your hands were so strong, Harry," said she.

"Would they were stronger!" was my retort. "And were I in charge of the affairs of Providence, the first thing I would do would be to wring the neck of every woman in the world."

"And then set out to put them together again, Harry? Don't be silly."

"Oh, yes, naturally. But you must admit, Helena, that women have no sense of reason whatever. For instance, if you really were trying out the fortune of some man on a daisy's head, you would not accept the decree of fate, any more than you could tell why you loved him or loved him not. Why does a woman love a man, Helena? You say I must not be silly--should I then be wise?"

"No, you are much too wise, so that you often bore me."

"Nor should he be poor?"

"No."

"Nor rich?"

"Certainly not. Rich men also usually are bores--they talk about themselves too much."

"Should he be a tall man?"

"Not too tall, for they're lanky, nor short, because they get fat. You see, each girl has her own ideal about such matters. Then, she always marries a man as different as possible from her ideal."

"Why does she marry a man at all, Helena?"

"She never knows. Why should she? But look--" she pointed out across the water--"the train is leaving the ferry boat. Isn't that Captain Peterson going aboard the train?"

"Yes, Helena, I've sent him down-town to get some light reading for you and your Aunt Lucinda--_Fox's Book of Martyrs_, and the _Critique of Pure Reason_--the latter especially recommended to yourself. I would I had in print a copy of my _magnum opus_, my treatment on native American _culicidae_. My book on the mosquito is going to be handsomely illustrated, Helena, believe me."

She turned upon me with a curious look. "Harry," said she, "you've changed in some ways. If I were not so bored by life in yonder hat box, I might even be interested in you for a few minutes. You used always to be so sober, but now, sometimes, I wonder if I understand you. Honestly, you were an awful stick, and no girl likes a stick about her. What do girls care which dynasty it was that built the pyramids?--it's Biskra they want to see. And we don't care when or why Baron Haussmann built the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris--it's the boulevard itself interests us."

"It is the fate of genius to be cast aside," said I. "No doubt even I shall be forgotten--even after my book on the _culicidae_ shall have been completed."

"--So that," she went on, not noticing me, "there is that one point in your favor."