The Lady and the Pirate

I had myself quite forgotten my appointed hour of eleven, feeling so

sure that it would not be remembered, as of covenant, by the party of

the second part, so to speak, and was sitting on the forward deck

looking out over the interesting pictures of the landscape that lay

about us. It was the morning of a Sabbath, and a Sabbath calm lay all

about us--silence, and hush, and arrested action. The sun itself, warm

at a time when soon the breezes must have been chill at my northern

home, was veiled in a soft and tender mist, which brought into yet

lower tones the pale greens and grays of the southern forest which

came close to the bayou's edge. The forest about us not yet fallen

before the devastating northern lumbermen--men such as my father had

been, who cared nothing for a tree or a country save as it might come

to cash--was in part cypress, in part cottonwood, but on the ridge

were many oaks, and over all hung the soft gray Spanish moss. The

bayou itself, once the river, but now released from all the river's

troubling duties, held its unceasing calm, fitted the complete

retirement of the spot, and scarce a ripple broke it anywhere. Over

it, on ahead, now and then passed a long-legged white crane, bound for

some distant and inaccessible swamp; all things fitting perfectly into

this quiet Sabbath picture.

My cigar was excellent, I had my copy of Epictetus at hand, and all

seemed well with the world save one thing. Here, at hand, was

everything man could ask, all comforts, many luxuries; and I knew,

though Helena did not, that the safe increase of my fortune--that

fortune which some had called tainted, and which I myself valued

little, soon as I had helped increase it by the exercise of my

profession--was quite enough to maintain equal comfort or luxury for

us all our lives. But she was obstinate, and so was I. She would not

say whether she loved Cal Davidson, and I would never undeceive her as

to my supposed poverty. Why, the very fact that she had dismissed me

when she thought my fortune gone--that, alone, should have proved her

unworthy of a man's second thought. Therefore, ergo, hence, and

consequently, I could not have been a man; for I swear I was giving

her a second thought, and a thousandth; until I rebelled at a weakness

that could not put a mere woman out of mind.

And then, I slowly turned my head, and saw her standing on the after

deck. Her footfall was not audible on the rubber deck-mats, and she

had not spoken. I resolved, as soon as I had leisure, to ask some

scientific friends to explain how it was possible that with no sound

or other appeal to any of the sensorial nerves, I could, at a distance

of seventy-five feet, become conscious of the presence of a person no

more than five feet five, who had not spoken a word, and was standing

idly looking out over the ship's rail, in quite the opposite direction

from that in which I sat. And then the ship's clock struck six bells,

and recalled the appointment at eleven. Hastily I dropped Epictetus

and my cigar, and hurried aft.