"Why?"
"She thinks I'm broke."
"Yes, too bad about that! I wish I could swap bank rolls with you. Why didn't you tell her the truth--and Helena, too? Why didn't you tell 'em it was your own yacht? Why didn't you tell 'em you're worth a few millions and don't have to work?"
"I don't know--maybe I'm like you, Cal, foolish about nightingales and things. But tell me--you never did tell them anything about that Sally M. mine business, did you?"
"No, I should say not! Didn't you tell me you didn't want it to get out? It was bad enough, the way old Dan and your--sainted father handed it to each other over that mine, wasn't it? I know about it, for I promoted that mine myself, and the name'll prove that--Sally M.
Byington, with the Byington left off! There wasn't a blasted thing in it then. But when you--like a blame quixotic fool--after she was good for six thousand a month velvet, and ore blocked out to last a thousand years--why, then you fool around in Papa's records, and think Papa wasn't on the square with old Dan. So on the quiet you get it all made over, back to old Dan's daughter; and take a sneak into the hazelbrush when she turns you down! Say, you know what _I'd_ a-done?"
"No."
--"I'd a-held on to the mine and told the girl how much it was bringin' in--that's _my_ system. Then I'd a-got the mine and the girl both, maybe!"
--"Maybe."
"Well, that's the system I'd a-played. I wouldn't a-took to the tall grass, me."
"On the other hand, I played a system invented by myself and Henri L'Olonnois."
"I never heard of him. Well, anyhow, you were rich enough to afford to do what you liked. But as to keeping it secret, you can't do that any longer. Those newspaper fellows are the devil to get hold of things.
Since all this stuff came out about you running away with your own boat--I can see now why you did it, and I'm glad you did--why, your whole life history has been printed, including all that restitution business about the Sally M. Fellows came to me and asked me about you, asked if I knew you. Said, yes, I knew you--said you were a romantic chap, and a good business man, too--and the best old scout in the world--what?"
I had arisen, and stood in some doubt. "What's the matter--let's go on up to the house. I want to see Sally," he concluded.
"And I want very much to see Helena," said I. "Only, it's going to be rather harder now to meet her--and Mrs. Daniver."
"Well, I don't know," said Cal Davidson; "every fellow plays his own system. There's something in what you say about women having a good poker face so far as tellin' what they think about a man is concerned--yes. Frinstance, how much did Helena know I knew, or know you knew or thought you knew--well, you get me? But the trouble with you is, you ain't romantic in your temperament like me.... But if I was you, I wouldn't be scared to tell Mrs. Daniver I had a dollar and a quarter or so left! It'll soften the blow some to her, maybe. And as for Helena----"
"And as for Helena, I can look her in the face, and she can me, now.
And--will you telephone to New Iberia for a minister--at once--for this evening train? And will you tell Edouard to have his man lay out his best evening clothes for me--tell him I'll trade him these of my cook's for them--and a suit of traveling clothes? Because, oh! fellow varlet----" (I paused here; we both did; for a mocker just now broke into an extraordinary burst of song, so sweet, so throbbingly sweet, that we could not help but listen, both of us being lovers)....
"What were you saying, old man?" Cal Davidson asked after a while, musingly, as one awakening.... "Some bird, what?"
... "Because, to-night," I answered, "I am going to marry my fair captive, yon heartless jade, Helena. I've loved her always, rich or poor, and she loves me, rich or poor. And we shall live happy ever after. And may God bless us, and all true lovers!"
"Amen!" I heard some one say; and have often wondered whether it was yon varlet, the mocking-bird, or Cal Davidson himself, who spoke.... I looked around for Partial. He had followed Helena.
FOOTNOTE:
[B] (The words in Helena's note, addressed to Henry Francis Drake, Esquire, were, as I have said, but two: "Yes--Now". That was why I was married that evening. It was curious about the wedding ring, for that I would not borrow; so an old negro blacksmith took a gold ring Edouard gave me, one found years ago by a Cajun treasure hunter in some one of the few successful hunts for the treasure of Jean Lafitte; and into this, in place of the gem long since missing, he clasped my pearl, the one we got on the river far in the north; the great pearl later known as the largest and most brilliant ever found in fresh water. It was I who named it the "_Belle Helene_". So that our ring pleased all but L'Olonnois and Jean Lafitte. These two pirates had set at work that very afternoon, with 'Polyte (by Edouard's consent) and dug behind the smoke-house. Wonderful enough, they did find old bricks, enclosing a sort of hollow cavity, bricks of an ancient day; and though they got nothing else ('Polyte said he knew who had beaten them to this treasure--it was Achilles Dufrayne of Calcasieu, curse him!) they both explained how easy it would be to deceive the fair captive into thinking we really had found the ring's setting as well as the ring itself, in a pirate treasure-box. I would not do that, on the ground that already I had deceived the fair captive quite enough.... But, though yon varlet, my friend dear old Cal Davidson, spoke rather freely about his honeymoon, and all that, I can not do so of mine with Helena.... I did not know that I could again be so happy.
Often I have wished I were a romantic man, like dear old Cal.... I fear my book on the mosquitoes of North America never will be written now.--H. F. D.)
THE END