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The Lady and the Pirate, a novel by Emerson Hough |
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Chapter 26. In Which We Burn All Bridges |
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_ CHAPTER XXVI. IN WHICH WE BURN ALL BRIDGES "But, Monsieur," began Jean, a few moments later, as he entered from the alley door. "Eh bien? What then, Jean?" I demanded hastily, already leading Helena toward the door. "This! This!" And he waved in my face a copy of the same paper which had lain on our table. "The streets are full of it. And I see, I behold--I recognize! It is Mademoiselle--that is to be Madame!" My face flushed hotly. "As I hope, Jean." That was all I said. "Now, please, out of our way. Is the taxi there?" He stepped aside. I heard his voice, eager, apologetic, but knew that now no time must be lost. Vague sounds of voices came to us from the main room of the cafe, ordinarily so quiet. I felt, rather than knew, that soon the news would be about town. The throb of the taxi was music to my ears when I found it in the dark. "Stop for nothing," said I to the driver, as I closed the door. "Slip K, on the river-front, below the warehouses. Stop at the car tracks where they turn. And go fast--I must catch a boat that is just leaving." "What boat--from there--are you sure, sir?" asked he, touching his cap. "Of course I'm sure. Go on! Don't stop to talk, man!" He made no answer to this, but turned to his wheel. We shot out into Royal Street, turned down it, spun into a narrow way past the old Cathedral, crossed Jackson Square in the full moonlight, passed the Old Market, and threaded dark and dirty thoroughfares parallel to the river. None sought to stay us, though many paused in the gently squalid life of that section, to look after our churning car, a thing not usual there so far from depot or usual landing place. Helena sat silent, looking fixedly ahead through the glass at the driver's back; nor did I find words myself. In truth, I was as one now carried forward on the wings of adventure itself, with small plans, and no duty beyond taking each situation as it might later come. A dull feeling that I had sinned beyond forgiveness came upon me, a conviction that my brutality to one thus innocent and tender had passed all limits of atonement. She could never forgive me now, I felt; and what was almost as intolerable in the reflection, I could not forgive myself, could not find any specious argument longer to justify myself in thus harrying the sensibilities of a woman such as this one who now sat beside me in this mad midnight errand, proud, pale and silent. Slowly I sought to adjust myself to the thought of defeat, to the feeling that my presumption now had o'er-leaped itself. Yes, I must say good-by to her, must release her; and this time, as I well knew, forever. But, though I turned toward her half a dozen times in these few minutes, she made no response to what she must have known was my demand upon her attention. I gathered her gloves for her, and her flowers, but she only took them, her lips parting in courtesy, not in warmth, and no sound came to my ears, straining always to hear her voice, a pleasant sound in a world of discords ever. I even touched her arm, suddenly, impulsively. "Helena!" But she, not knowing that I meant to give her liberty, though over a dead heart, shrank as though I had added physical insult to my verbal taunts. Anyway I turned, I was fast in the net of circumstance, fanged by the springs of misapprehension.... Well, then, but one thing remained. She had said it was a man's place to fight, and so now it would be! I must go on, and take my punishment until justice had been done. Justice and my own success I no longer confused in my own mind; but in my soul was the grim resolution that justice should first be done to one human soul, even though that chanced to be my own. After that, I should get her again in the hands of her friends and myself; indeed, disappear beyond all seeking, in parts of the world best known to myself. If I myself were fair, why should not fairness as well be given to me? And with no more than this established, and nothing definite in plan, either, for the present, I mechanically opened the door of the taxi for her when the driver pulled up and bent a querying face about to ask whether or not we now were opposite Slip K. I noted that he did not at once drive away. Evidently he sat for some moments gazing after us as we disappeared in the gloom of the river-front. His tale, as I afterward learned, enabled the morning papers to print a conclusive story describing the abduction of Miss Emory and her undoubted retention on the stolen yacht, which, after lying at or near New Orleans, some time that night, once more mysteriously had disappeared. No doubt remained, according to this new story, that the supplies put aboard at Slip K by Lavallier and Thibodeau had gone to this very craft, the stolen yacht! With this came many wild and confusing accounts and descriptions, including a passionate interview with Mr. Calvin Davidson, of New York, who had announced his intention of overhauling these ruffians, at any cost whatsoever; and much counsel to the city officials, mingled with the bosom-beating of one enterprising journal which declared it had put in commission a yacht of its own, under charge of two of its ablest reporters, who had instructions to take up the chase and to remain out until the mystery had been solved and this beautiful young woman had been rescued from her horrible situation and restored again to her home. There were more portraits of Helena--furnished, most like, from Cal Davidson's collection; one also of Aunt Lucinda (from a photograph of far earlier days); and lastly, a half-page portrait of myself, the unnamed ruffian who was the undoubted leader in this abduction--the portrait being drawn by a staff artist "from description of eye-witnesses." As I later saw this portrait I rejoiced that I was long ignorant of its existence: and had I known that night that yonder chauffeur to whom I had given undue largess had such treason as that portrait in his soul, I know not what I might have done with him. But of this misinformation, of course, I was at the time ignorant, as was all the city ignorant of the truth. What happened was otherwise, nor was the truth learned even by the great metropolitan journals of the North, which now recognized the existence of a "big story", and added their keener noses to the trail. The great fact overlooked by them all was that they pursued no criminal, but a man of education, I may fairly say of brains. In my law practise many baffling cases came to me, because I most liked, precisely, that sort of case. Once, for instance, a family of my town well-nigh was disrupted by a series of anonymous letters, done in typewriting, accusing an honorable man of dishonorable conduct. The letters left the man's wife in an agony of loyalty and suspicion alike. He brought me the letters, and to me the case was simple from the start. I got the repair slips of a certain typewriter house, and compared them until I found a machine with a bent letter M--knowing as I did that each machine has its own individuality as ineradicable and as inescapable as any personal handwriting. So at last I went to a small outlying city, and going into a business house there asked to see the stenographer in private. "My dear Miss ----," I said to her, "why do you persist in sending these letters to Mr. ----?" I laid them before her, and she wept and confessed, very naturally. That was merely jealousy of a discharged employee; and it was easy as a case--easier I always thought, than the probate case I won over a contested signature charge filed by certain heirs under a will. In this case I merely went to the dead man's earlier home and learned his history. Time out of mind he, a thrifty and respected German, had held some petty county office or other; and by going over old county warrants and receipts signed in forty years by my man, I discovered what I already knew--that a man's signature changes many times during his life, especially if he begins life as an uncultured immigrant and advances to a fair business success later in his life: so that his later signatures on records proved his signature in his will. Again, liking these simple mysteries, I had long ago learned to laugh at the old and foolish assertion that murder will out, that not the most skilful criminal can long conceal a capital crime. It is not true. No one knows how many murders and other crimes go unsolved or even unknown. The trouble with murderers, as I knew well enough, was that they lacked mentality. And often I said to myself that were it in my heart to kill a man, I assuredly could do so, and all my life escape unsuspected of the crime. It may be that my fondness for these less obvious things in the law had rendered me a trifle different from my fellow men. I could never approach any question in life without wanting to go all about it and to the bottom and top, like a cooper with his barrel. I was thus actuated, without doubt, in my relations years since with Helena Emory--I knew the shrewdness and accuracy of my own trained mind. I confess I exulted in the infallible, relentless logic of my mind, a mind able and well trained, especially well trained in reason and argument. So, when I put the one great brief of all my life before Helena, my splendid argument why should she love me, I did so, at first, in the conviction that it must be convincing. Had I not myself worked it out in each detail, had not my calm, cool, accurate reason guarded each portal? Was it, indeed, not a perfect brief--that one I held in my first lost case--the lost case which sent me out of my profession, left me a stranded hulk of a man? But then, when these two pirate youngsters had found me and touched me with the living point of some new flame of life, so that I knew a vast world existed beyond the nature of the intellect, the old ways clung to me, after all. Even as I swore to lay hold on youth and on adventure (and on love, if, in sooth, that might be for me now), I could not fight as yet wholly bare of the old weapons that had so long fitted my hand. So, even on that very morning when we set forth from my farm to be pirates, my mind ran back to its old cunning, and I recalled my earlier boast to myself that if I ever cared to be a criminal I knew I could be able to cover my tracks. Those writing-folk, therefore, who now wasted thousands of dollars in pursuit of trace and trail of Black Bart, wealthy ex-lawyer, knew nothing of their man, and guessed nothing of his caliber or of his methods. They even failed to look in plain sight for their trail maker. And having done so, they forgot that water leaves no trail. Yet that simple thought had come to my mind as I had sat at breakfast in my own house, some weeks before this time! Even then I had planned all this. Absorbed as I had been in this pursuit of Helena, baffled as I had been by her, unhappy as I now was over her own unhappiness, fierce as was my love for her, still and notwithstanding, some trace of my old self clung to me even now when, her hand on my arm, I guided Helena in silence over the creaking planks of the dock, and saw, at last, dim beyond the edge, the boom of the Mississippi's tawny flood, rolling on and onward to the sea. Here was a task, a problem, a chase, an endeavor, an adventure! To it, I was impelled by my old training; into it I was thrust by all these fevers of the blood. Even though she did not love me, she was woman ... in the dark air of night, it seemed to me, I could smell the faint maddening fragrance of her hair.... No. It was too late! I would not release her. I would go on, now! And with this resolution, formed when I caught sight of the passing flood, I found a sudden peace and calm, and so knew that I was fit for my adventure as yon other boy, L'Olonnois, was for his. I paused at the edge of the wharf, at the side of our boat. We still were arm in arm, still silent, though she must have felt the beating of my heart. "Helena," I whispered, "yonder, one step, and your parole is over. Here it is not. That boat, just astern, is the one in which Cal Davidson chased us all the way from Natchez, in which I chased him all the way from Dubuque. His men do not know we are here, nor does he as yet. Now, what is it that you wish to do?" She stood silent for some time, tightening her wrap at the throat against the river damp, and made no answer, though her gaze took in the dark hull of the low-lying craft made fast below us. When at last: "One thing," she began, "I will not do." "What is it?" I asked. We spoke low, but I well knew my men were aware of our coming. "I shall ask no favor of you." And as she spoke, she stepped lightly on the rubbered deck of the Belle Helene. "Halt! Who goes there?" called the hoarse voice of Jean Lafitte, the faithful: and I knew the joy of the commander feeling that loyalty is his. "'Tis I, Black Bart," I answered, full and clear. "Cast off, my friends!" At once the Belle Helene was full of activity. Peterson I met at the wheel. I heard the bells jangle below. I saw Jean, active as a cat, ready at the mooring-stub, waiting for the line to ease. Then with my own hand I threw on every light of the Belle Helene, so that she blazed, in the power of six thousand candles, search-light and all: so that what had been a passing web of gloom now became a rippling river. The warehouses started into light and shade, the shadows of the wharf fled, the decks of the grimy craft alongside became open of all their secrets. And now, revealed full in the flood of light as she stood at the side portal, Helena did what I had not planned. Freed of her parole she was--and she had asked no favor of me--so she had right to make attempt to escape; and I gently stepped before her even as Jean cast off and sprang aboard: and as I heard L'Olonnois' voice imperatively demanding silence of the pounding at the after cabin door. All at once, I heard what Helena heard--the rattle of wheels on the stone flagging of the street beyond. And then I saw her fling back her cloak and stand with cupped hands. Her voice was high, clear and unwavering, such voice as a pirate's bride should have, fearless and bold. "Ahoy, there! Help! Help!" she cried. Some sort of shout came from the street, we knew not from whom. A noise of an opening hatch came from the Sea Rover at our stern, and a man's tousled head came into view. "What's goin' on here," he demanded, as quaveringly as querulously. I made no answer, but saw our bows crawl out and away, felt the sob of the screws, the arm of the river also, and knew a vast and pleasing content with life. "L'Olonnois!" I called through the megaphone. "Aye, aye, Sir!" I heard his piping rejoinder. "Cast loose the stern-chaser and fire her at yon varlet if he makes a move." I knew our deck cannon was loaded with nothing more deadly than newspapers, but I also knew that valor feeds on action. Not that I had given orders to fire on the world in general. So, I confess, I was somewhat surprised, soon after the shout of approval which greeted my command, to hear the air rent by the astonishing reverberation of our Long Tom, which rolled like thunder all along the river-front, breaking into a thousand echoes in the night. I heard the patter of feet along the deck, and had sight of Jean Lafitte tugging at a halyard. Not content with our defiance of law and order, he must needs break out the Jolly Rover with its skull and cross-bones. And as we swung swiftly out into midstream, ablaze in light from bow to stern, ghostlike in our swiftness and the silence of our splendid engines, I had reason to understand all the descriptive writing which, as I later learned, greeted the defiant departure of this pirate craft and its ruffian crew. Thus I bade all the world come and take from me what I had taken for my own. I stepped to the wheel with Peterson, expecting to find him pale in consternation. To my surprise he was calm, save for a new glitter in his eye. "There's nothing on the river can touch her," said he, as he picked up his first channel light and called for more speed. "Let 'em come!" A sudden recklessness had caught us all, it seemed, the old spirit of lawless man breaking the leash of custom. I shared it--with exultation I knew I shared it with these others. The lust of youth for adventure held us all, and the years were as naught. I turned now to find Helena, and met L'Olonnois, his face beaming. "Wasn't that a peach of a shot?" said he. "It would of blew yon varlet out of the water, if I'd had anything to load with except just them marbles. Are you looking for Auntie Helen? She has just went below." _ |
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