The Lady And The Pirate - The Lady and the Pirate Part 45
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The Lady and the Pirate Part 45

"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 up in the book; an' it says where the heartless jade is brought before the pirut chief, 'How now, fair one!' says he, an' he bends on her the piercin' gaze o' his iggle eye: 'how now, wouldst spurn me suit?' The fair captive she bends her head an' stands before him unable to encounter his piercin' gaze, an' for some moments a deep silence prevails----"

"Jimmy!" I heard a clear voice calling along the deck. No answer, and Jimmy raised a hand to command silence of me also.

"Jimme-e-e-e!" It was Helena's voice, and nearer along the rail.

"Here's the fudges--now where can the little nuisance have gone! Jim!"

"Here I am, Auntie," replied the little nuisance, as she now approached the door of our cabin; and he brushed past me and started not aft but toward the bows. "An' there _you_ are!" he shouted over his shoulder in cryptic speech, whether to me or to his Auntie Helen I could not say.

She stood now in such position near my door that neither of us could avoid the other without open rudeness. I looked at her gravely and she at me, her eyes wide, her lips silent for a time. Silently also, I swung the cabin door wide and stood back for her to pass.

"You have sent for me?" she said at last, still standing as she was. A faint smile--part in humor, part in timidity, part, it seemed suddenly to me, wistful; and all just a trifle pathetic--stirred her lips.

"'I sent my soul through the Invisible,'" said I; and stepped within and quite aside for her to pass.

"Jimmy told the biggest lie in all his career," said I. She would have sprung back.

"--And the greatest truth ever told in all the world. Come in, Helena Emory. Come into my quiet home. Already, as you know, you have come into my heart."

"I am not used to going into a gentleman's--quarters," said she: but her foot was on the shallow stair.

"It is common to three gentlemen of the ship's company, Helena Emory,"

said I, "and we have no better place to receive our friends."

She now was in the room. I closed the door, and sprung the catch.

"At last," said I, "you are in my power!" And I bent upon her the piercing gaze of my eagle eye.

CHAPTER XXXIX

IN WHICH ARE SEALED ORDERS

She stood before me for just a moment undecided. The twilight was coming and the room was dim.

"Auntie will miss me," said she, "after a time."

"I have missed you all the time," was my reply.

"But you sent for me?"

"Of course I did. Doesn't this look as though I had?"

"I don't quite understand----"

"Shall I call Jimmy to explain? He called you a heartless jade----"

"The little imp! How dare he!"

"--As in fact all of our brotherhood has come to call you: 'The heartless jade.'"

"I made fudges for him! And the little wretch told me I wasn't playing the game! What did he mean? Oh, Harry, I wouldn't have come if I hadn't wanted to play the game fairly. I'm sorry for what I said." She spoke now suddenly, impulsively.

"What was it you said?"

"When I said--when I called you--a coward. I didn't mean it."

"You said it."

"But not the way you thought. I only meant, you took an unfair advantage of a girl, running off with her, this way, and giving her no chance to--to get away. But now you do give me a chance--you meant to, all along--and in every way, as I've just done telling auntie, you've been perfectly fine, perfectly splendid, perfectly bully, too! It has been a hard place for a man, too, but--Harry, dear boy, I'll have to say it, you've been some considerable gentleman through it all! There now!" And she stood, aloof, agitated, very likely flushed, though I could not tell in the dark.

"Thank you, Helena," I said.

"And as to your being any other sort of a coward--that you had physical fear--that you wouldn't do a man's part--why, I never did mean that at all. How could I? And if I had--why, even Auntie Lucinda said your going out after that Chinaman the other night was heroic--even if he couldn't have cooked a bit!--and you know Auntie Lucinda has always been against you."

"Yes, and you both called me a coward, because I quit my law office and ran away from misfortune."

"Yes, we did. And I meant that, too! I say it now to your face, Harry.

But maybe I don't know all about that----"

"Maybe not."

"Well, I wouldn't want to be unjust, of course, but I _don't_ think a man ought to throw away his life. You're young. You could start over again, and you ought to have tried. Your father made his own money, and so did my father--why, look at the Sally M. mine, that has given me my own fortune. Do you suppose that grew on a bush to be shaken off? So why couldn't you go out in the same way and do something in the world--I don't mean just make money, you know, but _do_ something?

That's what a girl likes. And you were able enough. You are young and strong, and you have your education; and I've heard my father say, before he died--and other men agreed with him--that you were the best lawyer at our bar, and that you had an extraordinary mind, and a clear sense of justice, and, and----"

"Go on. Did he say that?"

"Yes."

"But with all my fine qualities of mind and heart," said I, "I lost all when I lost my money!"

"What do you mean?"

"I'll tell you what I mean--you dropped me because you thought me poor. Well, I don't blame you. It takes money to live, and you deserved all that the world can give. I don't blame you. There were other men in the world for you. The trouble with me was that there was no other woman in the world for me. All our trouble--all our many meetings and partings--have come out of those two facts."